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Calvin in His Study 



John Calvin 

Theologian, Preacher, Educator, Statesman 

Presented to the Reformed Churches holding the 
Presbyterian System, on the 400th 
Anniversary of the Re former s Birth 

BY 

REV. PHILIP VOLLMER, Ph.D., D.D. 

Professor in the Central Theological Seminary of the Reformed Church, 
Dayton, Ohio 

WITH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM 

Rev. J. I. Good, D.D., and Rev. Wm. H. Roberts, D.D., LL.D. 



Philadelphia 
THE HEIDELBERG PRESS 
Fifteenth and Race Streets 



.' Vfe 



Copyright by 
The Heidelberg Press 
1909 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 

Two Ccoies Received 

apr 9 \m 

CLASS XXc 



PREFACE 



The following pages present to the reader a labor of 
love. Calvin studies, pursued by the author for many 
years, have created in his mind an ever deepening con- 
viction that the* Genevan Reformer was the instrument 
specially raised up by God for the purpose of saving 
and preserving to the world the fruits of the reforma- 
tion, at a time when these were in imminent danger of 
being frittered away by incompetent leaders. The great 
genius of "Wittenberg had died in 1546, with gloomy 
forebodings as to the future of the work which he and 
Zwingli had so successfully inaugurated. His prophetic 
vision did not deceive him. Soon after his death, the 
storm of opposition became so virulent as to threaten the 
very existence of Protestantism. A heart-rending wail 
w T ent up to heaven : ' ' Lord, save us ; we perish ! ' ' Lead- 
ers in one compartment of Protestantism, in their anx- 
iety to save at least a few treasures, went so far as to 
counsel the lightening of the vessel by throwing over- 
board the very principles which were essential to the 
life of the reformation, when they consented to compro- 
mises of the most dangerous character, offered by pope, 
emperor and princes. It was at this critical juncture 
that the figure of the Genevan Reformer appeared in 
ever increasing proportions on the horizon of the 
Church, as the international leader and the organizer of 
the Reformed forces. In the name of the Captain of our 
Salvation, he stayed the demoralization. " Peace, be 
still ! ' ' he cried aloud. ' 1 Rather death than surrender, ' ' 
was the parole he gave out. Instinctively the lesser lead- 
ers of the Reformed churches in Great Britain and on 



vi 



PREFACE. 



the continent rallied about this rocky character, and soon 
the ship returned to its true course. Thus, by keeping 
afloat and putting in first class order his own compart- 
ment of the vessel, Calvin indirectly saved the whole 
craft of Protestantism. Believing this to be Calvin's 
place in history, we cannot help loving and revering him. 

The outward occasion for the publication of this 
book, is the four hundredth anniversary of Calvin's 
birth, on July 10, 1909. Eeliable information from all 
parts of the world indicate that the Calvin Memorial 
Day will be very generally observed, even beyond the 
limits of the Reformed and Presbyterian churches. This 
is as it should be; for there are features in Calvin's 
character and work which deserve special emphasis at 
this time. A revival of certain aspects of Calvinism 
would surely redound to the betterment of our political, 
social, ethical, religious and educational conditions. Es- 
pecially our young people should become more familiar 
with so great and good a man, since he is one of those 
personalities of whom Longfellow, in his Psalm of Life, 
says : 

Lives of great men all remind us 

We can make our lives sublime, 
And departing, leave behind us 

Footprints on the sands of time. 

The book is designed for popular use; but we trust 
that the student of the deeper aspects of Calvin's char- 
acter and work will also find in it food for thinking and 
helpful suggestions, especially in the chapters of the 
second part of the book. 

We are greatly indebted to our honored colleague and 
friend, the Rev. Prof. J. I. Good, D.D., for his contribu- 
tion on Calvin's Influence in Switzerland and Germany, 
a subject on which he is a specialist and recognized au- 



PREFACE. 



vii 



thority and for the illustrations in the book. Our 
thanks are also due to the Rev. W. H. Roberts, D.D., 
LL.D., for the use of his spirited treatise on Calvin's 
Influence in America. 

Dr. Philip Schaff says, "Calvin improves upon ac- 
quaintance." May this little book contribute a small 
share to a better appreciation of this great leader of the 
reformation. ■ 

Philip Vollmer. 

Dayton, 0., March 18, 1909. 



CONTENTS 



Page 

I. Early Life and Education, 1 

II. A Student at Three Universities, 6 

III. Conversion and First Labors, 11 

IV. A Fugitive in His Own Country, 14 

V. A Pilgrim in Foreign Lands, 19 

VI. First Ministry in Geneva, 25 

VII. Struggle with the Libertines and Banishment, . 31 

VIII. Ministry at Strasburg, 37 

IX. Eelations with the German Eeformers, 42 

X. Calvin's Marriage and Home Life, 45 

XI. Eecall to Geneva and Eeconstruction Work, ... 50 

XII. Eenewed Conflict with the Libertines, 57 

XIII. Controversy with Servetus, 66 

XIV. Pastoral Work at Home and Abroad, 71 

XV. Founding of the Genevan University, 74 

XVI. Last Months and Death, 78 

XVII. Personal Character of Calvin, 83 

XVIII. Tributes to the Memory of Calvin, 100 

XIX. Calvin the Theologian, 114 

XX. Calvin the Preacher and Pastor, 123 

XXI. Calvin the Educator, 131 

XXII. Calvin the Statesman, 136 

XXIII. Calvin the Promoter of Church Union, 142 

XXIV. What is Calvinism? 149 

XXV. Calvinism and Civil Liberty, 159 

XXVI. Calvinism and Morality, 167 

ix 



X 



CONTENTS. 



XXVII. Calvinism and Modern Thought, 175 

XXVIII. Calvin 's Influence on Great Britain and Holland, 189 
XXIX. Calvin's Influence on Switzerland and Germany, 

by Kev. J. I. Good, D.D., 194 

XXX. Calvin's Influence on America, by Eev. Wm. H. 

Eoberts, D.D., LLJD., 202 

XXXI. Statistics of the Eeformed Churches, 216 



JOHN CALVIN 

CHAPTER I. 

EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATION. 

John Calvin was born at Noyon, in Picardy, France, 
on the 10th of July, 1509, and was baptized in the 
church of St. Godabertes in the course of that month. 
He was the second of a family of six, — four sons and 
two daughters. His father, Gerard Chauvin, was a 
cooper, Procurator-Fiscal for the county and Secretary 
to the Bishop of the diocese — functions more honorable 
than lucrative. Calvin's mother was distinguished for 
her beauty and piety. From his father, the reformer 
may have inherited his methodical habits, the gravity 
of disposition, tinctured with censoriousness, which led 
even his schoolmates to fasten on him the nickname of 
the " Accusative. ' ? From the mother he probably derived 
his nervous organization, his fine features, his native 
courtesy of manner, and that constitutional shyness and 
timidity which to the end of his life he never wholly 
overcame. The pictures of his countenance in later life 
still show noble and delicately chiselled features, yet 
mingled with traces indicating toil and anxiety. All 
of his portraits represent him as severe, but not ill-na- 
tured, except in the libels upon him by his enemies. He 
was of middle stature, somewhat pale; his skin was 
rather brown and his eyes clear, even sparkling, to his 
death. In his dress he was very neat, but without orna- 
ment, as became his great simplicity. The home in 
which Calvin was born was pulled down by his enemies, 
and an inhabitant of the city, it is said, who rebuilt 



EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATION. 



3 



it, was hung in front of the door. Many superstitious 
stories concerning him, born of hatred, were long afloat 
among his enemies. The exact minute at which he came 
into the world was ascertained; the conjunction of the 
planets at the time of his nativity was calculated and 
his horoscope was made to foretell all the evils which 
he afterwards would bring upon the Church. Even as a 
child, his enemies aver, Calvin gave proof of the hellish 
plans which he was born to execute. In a public pro- 
cession, they say, he was observed to bear a sword in his 
hand, instead of a cross "a presage," explains the 
record, ' ' that he would one day prove a great persecutor 
of the holy cross and that he would plant his false re- 
ligion with the sword. " Following the custom of the 
learned men of his time, the reformer in later life trans- 
lated his name into Latin, then the universal language of 
all educated people, and signed himself "Calvinus." 

Calvin's home training was rigorous. His father did 
not err on the side of over-indulgence. He kept his 
children in great awe, and testified to his love for them 
by restraining their vices and providing for their fu- 
ture welfare, rather than by caresses and the gratifica- 
tion of their youthful propensities. The reformer looked 
back on his training with unmingled gratitude. "I 
had," he says, "a somewhat severe father, and I rejoice 
at it, as the source of any virtues which I may possess." 
His mother's sincere piety showed itself according to 
the custom of that age in a scrupulous and devout at- 
tention to the forms of worship prescribed by the church. 
Calvin, later in his life, relates how he was once taken 
by his mother to the festival of St. Anna to see a 
relic of the saint preserved in the Abbey of Ourscamp, 
near Noyon, and that he remembers kissing "a part of 
the body of St. Anna, the mother of the Virgin Mary." 



4 



JOHN CALVIN. 



Under the training of such parents Calvin gave early 
symptoms of religious feeling. Not only was his boy 
life free from vice, but he was also known to sharply 
reprove his youthful companions who showed evidences 
of loose morals. 

His early education Calvin received in three different 
schools. The rudiments of knowledge he acquired in the 
College des Capettes. But through the respectable con- 
nections of his father, Calvin himself tells us, he was, 
when still a boy, received into the house of the illustrious 
family of Genlis de Hangert, which held for two gen- 
erations the episcopal see of Noyon, and there he was 
educated with one of the sons of this family. At another 
period of his boyhood we find the reformer pursuing 
his studies in company with the children of the noble 
house of Mommor, the most honorable in the neighbor- 
hood, but at his father's expense. With lasting gratitude 
he ever afterwards remembered this family, and his 
first book, on Seneca, he dedicated to a Mommor, the 
prelate of St. Eloi, with whom he had studied. This in- 
timacy with great families had important results for 
Calvin, both as imparting to him that air of good 
breeding and refinement which never afterwards left 
him, and as securing for him the advantages of a thor- 
oughly liberal education, while the graveness of his char- 
acter, and the vigilant eye of his parents preserved him 
from those vices and extravagant ideas which are 
often contracted by young men when associating with 
people of wealth and rank. 

Young Calvin was destined for the Church, and as the 
expenses to a father of six children with a meagre in- 
come were heavy, his father procured for his son, then 
only twelve years of age, a chaplainship in the cathedral 
of Noyon, a step which necessitated his receiving the 



EAKLY LIFE AND EDUCATION. 



5 



tonsure, that is, the shaving of the crown of his head. 
In 1527, when he was only eighteen years of age, he 
received the income of a parish priest. Unlike Luther 
and Zwingli, Calvin was never ordained a priest, yet 
he preached many times to the people, after receiving 
this preferment. This transaction startles us, but in 
those times of secularization of sacred things it w r as very 
common. Pope Leo X, Luther's antagonist, had been 
made Archbishop of Aix at five years of age. These pre- 
ferments were voluntarily surrendered by Calvin in 
1534, soon after his conversion to the Reformed faith. 



CHAPTER II. 



A STUDENT AT THREE UNIVERSITIES. 

In 1523 a destructive pestilence raged in Noyon, and 
his father procured for his promising son leave of ab- 
sence, the more so as no functions whatsoever were re- 
quired of this fourteen-year-old chaplain. In company 
with the Mommors, Calvin proceeded to Paris for the 
purpose of studying in the university. There he was 
entrusted to the care of a brother of his father, Richard 
Chauvin, who was a locksmith. In Paris he remained 
for four years, perfecting himself in Latin and familiar- 
izing himself with logic and philosophy. He entered the 
college of La Marche, where he had for his teacher in 
his humanistic studies, the famous Cordery. To him 
he was principally indebted for his classical taste and 
the command over the Latin tongue which he attained. 
Calvin was a grateful pupil. Later in life, in dedicat- 
ing one of his books to his revered teacher, he writes : 

"It is but just that a portion of my labors should 
be inscribed to you, under whose direction, at my first 
entrance on the course of study, I made such proficiency 
as to be at least of some benefit to the Church of God. 
Having been sent by my father to Paris when a boy, 
after I had obtained a slight acquaintance with the rudi- 
ments of the Latin tongue, I providentially obtained you 
for a short time as my preceptor, and by means of your 
natural mode of teaching, learned to prosecute the study 
in a better way than that to which I had been accus- 
tomed. You had formerly presided over the highest 
class, but finding that the scholars who came from the 
other masters, trained for show, were not grounded in 

6 



A STUDENT AT THREE UNIVERSITIES. 7 

the principles of the language, so that you needed to 
form them anew, and wearied with this drudgery, in 
the year that I entered the University, you chose to 
undertake the charge of the fourth class. I perceive 
the singular goodness of God in ordering it so that I 
should have the advantage of such tuition. For though 
I did not enjoy it long, your instructions were of such 
benefit to me, that I willingly ascribe to them any skill 
which I may have attained in this department/' 

Cordery was richly rewarded for his services, if it 
be true that his pupil was the means of converting him 
to the Protestant faith. Calvin regularly corresponded 
with him, and procured his appointment to the rector- 
ship of the grammar school of Geneva, where he died 
at the age of eighty-eight. 

Eeluctantly Calvin left La Marche College and en- 
tered the College of Montaign, of the same University 
in Paris. Here a Spaniard, invincibly attached to 
Aristotle and through him to Romanism, became his 
teacher of logic and scholastic philosophy. Although 
uncongenial to his mind, the art of disputation which he 
acquired here became useful to him in his later life, 
when his keen intellect proved more than a match for 
his opponents by using their own favorite weapons. 
His spare time he applied to reading privately the best 
Roman authors, both in prose and verse, while his fellow- 
students spent their leisure hours in frivolous or disso- 
lute amusements. To these linguistic studies the French 
tongue, as written afterwards by Calvin, is greatly in- 
debted for its beauty and fluency. 

It is interesting to listen to one of his enemies, who 
writes of his conduct at this period of his life as follows : 

4 4 Under a lean and attenuated body, he already dis- 
played a lively and vigorous spirit, prompt at repartie, 



s 



JOHN CALVIN. 



bold to attack; a great faster, either on account of his 
health and to stop the fumes of the headache which 
assaulted him continually, or to have his mind more free 
for writing, studying, and improving his memory. He 
spoke but little, but his words were always full of 
gravity and never missed their aim; he was never to 
be seen in company, but always in retirement." 

At this time the ''Lutheran'' heresy, as the reforma- 
tion movement was dubbed by its enemies, had entered 
France. Calvin might have seen the burning of Pov- 
anne, the first martyr of the reformation at Paris, and 
others following him. What did the seventeen-year-old 
Calvin think of these executions ? We have no means of 
knowing, except that soon afterwards he was not afraid 
to expose himself to like dangers. 

In the year 1527, when Calvin was eighteen years of 
age, his studies took a different turn. Of this change 
he himself gives the following account: 

"When I was yet a very little boy my father had 
destined me for the study of theology. But afterwards, 
when he considered that the legal profession commonly 
raised those who followed it to wealth, this prospect 
induced him suddenly to change his purpose. Thus it 
came to pass that I was withdrawn from the study of 
philosophy, and was put to the study of law. ' 9 

Calvin himself does not seem to have been consulted 
in this step, but, governed in all things by his sense 
of duty rather than by inclination, he lost no time in 
giving effect to his father's will. 

Leaving Paris he repaired to the University of Or- 
leans, which had long been the chief faculty of law in 
France. Under the celebrated lawyer, Peter Stella, 
he soon distinguished himself so much that at the ex- 
piration of a year he was no longer considered a pupil 



A STUDENT AT THREE UNIVERSITIES. 



9 



but a teacher, being more than once employed to teach 
the classes during the absence or illness of the profess- 
ors. As in the case of other successful ministers, this 
legal training proved a preparation for his great work 
in the future, as a statesman in Geneva, and as founder 
of the Presbyterial Church Government. "When Calvin 
left the University, the highest honors of the faculty 
were unanimously conferred on him without any fee, 
as. a reward for uncommon merit. Letters from this 
period show that he had a large circle of friends, that 
he had a strong inclination to form friendships, that 
he was warm and steady in his attachments, and that, 
while exempt from vices and frivolities, he could indulge 
in the gay humor and pleasantries of youth. 

In the year 1531, Calvin went to the University of 
Bourges, attracted by the fame of Alciat, professor of 
law from Italy. There he met Melchior Wolmar, a 
German from Rothweil in Switzerland, a person of 
great integrity and learning, under whom he studied 
Greek and the New Testament. A mutual friendship 
was formed between the two which lasted till the death 
of Wolmar. In a dedication of one of his books to 
"Wolmar, Calvin writes : 

"I cannot forget the fidelity with which you have 
cultivated and increased the friendship which was long 
ago formed between us, the liberality with which you 
were prepared to testify your regard for me and the zeal 
which you showed to raise me to an honorable situation, 
which the calling to which I was then bound prevented 
me from accepting. But I am chiefly delighted with 
the recollection of that early period when my father 
sent me to acquire legal knowledge. I added the study 
of the Greek language which you taught me. It was not 
your fault that I did not make greater progress in it. 



10 



JOHN CALVIN". 



for the death of my father called me away soon after I 
had started. For this I owe you no small thanks, that 
you imbued my mind ;with the first principles which 
were afterwards of great advantage to me." 

About this time he also commenced the study of He- 
brew. From the preceding dedication we learn the 
exact time of his leaving the University of Bourges, for 
his father died on May 26th, 1531. After the funeral 
Calvin removed to Paris, partly for the sake of super- 
intending the studies of his younger brother Anthony. 
Beza, Calvin's first biographer, describes the reformer's 
diligence at these three universities which he attended, 
saying: "It was his custom, after a moderate supper, 
to pass half the night in study, and the next morning 
as soon as he awoke, to think over again and to complete 
what he had learned before midnight. By these night 
watches, he acquired his vast and exact learning, and 
sharpened his natural powers of thought and his acute 
memory, but by the same means he prepared for himself 
bodily suffering and an early death." 

In the following year, 1532, Calvin published as his 
first work, a commentary on Seneca's treatise, "De 
Clementia," with the object, as some suppose, to stay 
the wrath of King Francis I, and extinguish the 
fires which had been kindled against the "Lutherans." 
But there is no proof of such a design in the book; 
neither is it possible to infer from the numerous notes 
what the religious sentiments of the commentator were 
at that time. The work is entirely literary and philo- 
sophical, — the first fruits of his extensive classical 
studies. 



CHAPTER III. 



CONVERSION AND FIRST LABORS. 

We come now to the great crisis in our reformer's 
life, his " sudden conversion/' as he himself calls this 
change, which made him an uncompromising defender 
of the Reformed faith. Although " sudden" we may 
easily recognize different steps and a progressive 
development in this change. His youth was irreproach- 
ably pure, he was a devoted Catholic. "I was obsti- 
nately addicted/' he tells us, "to the Papal supersti- 
tions." In Paris he must have learned much of the 
new doctrines. The discussions to which they led in 
the theological faculty, and the persecution to which 
they subjected a person of such note as Berquin, must 
have formed the topic of frequent conversations among 
the more advanced students. Considerable influence 
must have been exerted on his mind by his kinsman 
Olivetan, the future translator of the Bible into French, 
who directed him to the study of the Scripture. It is 
highly probable that he received this advice before he 
left Paris for Orleans. In this city, he lodged in the 
same house with a German Protestant. 

His German professor Wolmar at Bourges had opened 
to him the New Testament in the original Greek. This 
influence, and the conversation and disputes with several 
of his Protestant fellow-students opened his eyes to 
some of the abuses in the church ; but it was not until a 
later period that the light broke, and he became con- 
vinced of the truth as it is in Jesus Christ by "a sudden 
conversion." A graphic description of his state of 
mind at this decisive turning point is contained in his 

11 



12 



JOHN CALVIN. 



famous letter to Cardinal Sadolet, written from Stras- 
burg, in which he says : 

' ' The law which I strove faithfully to obey took hold 
of my conscience, and convinced me more deeply of sin. 
I tried absolutions, penances, intercessions, but with- 
out obtaining relief or peace of mind. As often as I 
looked into myself or attempted to lift my eyes to thee, 
God, I was filled with a dread which no penances 
could mitigate. The more narrowly I inspected myself 
the deeper did the sting enter into my conscience, so 
that at last I could find no ease but by steeping my 
mind in f orgetf ulness. ' 9 

The precise date of Calvin's conversion is uncertain, 
but most historians place it as late as 1532, after the 
publication of his first book. 

The effects of his conversion were immediate on the 
young scholar's plans of life. The study of the law 
was at first prosecuted with relaxed energy, and in a 
short time entirely laid aside. But he had no thought 
of coming forward as a regular preacher. He desired 
first to examine the foundations of the Reformed faith 
and to study with critical attention the controversial 
writings of the age, as well as to read the works of the 
Church fathers, so that he might be able to serve the 
reformation with his pen and help in constructing a 
theological system of sound doctrine. 

Man proposes, but God disposes. The retirement 
which Calvin sought seemed to flee from him. The ex- 
tent and solidity of his knowledge, joined to an unaf- 
fected and manly style filled the friends of the reforma- 
tion with admiration, and soon we find him at Orleans, 
Bourges, and other places, preaching and teaching, so 
that he could say, "All my retreats were like public 
schools." Young as he was, he was even consulted 



CONVERSION AND FIRST LABORS. 



13 



along with the first reformers on the celebrated question 
of the marriage of Henry VIII of England. Most of his 
available time for preaching he gave, however, to the 
Protestants of Paris. The evangelical party in that city 
held their meetings in quiet places. Among them was a 
merchant, Stephen de la Forge, who did much for the 
truth, and was subsequently burned at the stake. 
Calvin praises him as one to be blessed among the faith- 
ful—a holy martyr of Christ. In these meetings at 
Paris, Calvin preached w^ith great force, often conclud- 
ing his discourse with these words, "If God be for us, 
who can be against us." 

A Catholic French writer speaks of this period of 
his work as follows: 

"Devoted otherwise to his books and his study, he 
was unweariedly active in everything which concerned 
the advancement of his sect. We have seen our prisons 
choked with poor mistaken wretches, whom he exhorted 
without ceasing; consoled or confirmed by letters. Nor 
were messengers wanting, to whom the doors were open, 
notwithstanding all the diligence exercised by the jailers. 
In this way he gained step by step a part of our France. 
Later he wished to proceed more rapidly and he sent 
out what he called ' preachers' to promulgate his religion 
in holes and corners and even in Paris itself where the 
fires were lit to consume them." 



Chapter i y. 



A FUGITIVE IN HIS OWN COUNTRY. 

Not long after Calvin's conversion, in 1533, an inci- 
dent occurred which brought, his name prominently be- 
fore the public. Nicholas Cop, a friend of Calvin and 
rector of the University, took occasion of an inaugural 
address to deliver an oration on "Christian Philoso- 
phy," which, it turned out afterwards, had been com- 
posed for him by Calvin. The boldness of the ideas, 
and the evangelical character of the sentiments, excited 
a storm of disapprobation. The University obtained an 
order from the French Parliament to seize the rector 
and the suspected author. Cop at first delivered him- 
self to the officers of the court, but, being admonished on 
the way to the court-house of the danger to which he 
was exposed, made his escape and retired into Switzer- 
land. Going straight to Calvin's lodgings, the officers 
searched his chamber in his absence and papers were 
discovered implicating the reformer and several of his 
friends. "Warned in time, the reformer escaped by a 
window and ran to the St. Victor suburb, where he 
changed his clothes and fled in the disguise of a vine- 
dresser. 

Calvin was now for some time a fugitive in his own 
country. But going from place to place he scattered the 
seed of the gospel on every side. He went first to the 
castle of the Lord of Hazeville. During his stay in that, 
part of the country he made a number of converts, some 
of whom afterwards became eminent in the Eeformed 
Church. At last he went to Nerac, the court of Mar- 
guerite, the Queen of Navarre, who had given an asylum 

14 



A FUGITIVE IN HIS OWN COUNTRY. 



15 



to many of those whom persecution had chased from 
Paris, Orleans, Meaux, and other places. At Nerae he 
visited the celebrated Faber, who had preached the doc- 
trines of justification by faith before Luther, in 1512, 
who had also been the tutor of the king's children and 
was now living in banishment. This venerable old man 
listened to Calvin's conversation with deep interest, and 
after his departure said to his friends : ' ' Calvin will be 
a distinguished instrument in restoring the kingdom of 
God in France." At Angouleme, Calvin remained some 
little time with Du Tillet, a priest, and a secret adherent 
of the Reformed faith. Traces of his residence there 
long existed in the country; a vineyard was known as 
"Calvin's Vineyard" 150 years after his death. His 
host possessed a library of over 3,000 books, an enor- 
mous number for the times, which Calvin knew how to 
appreciate. He repaid Du Tillet 's hospitality by teach- 
ing him Greek — another way of teaching him the gospel. 
Here he also prepared the first, sketch of his "Insti- 
tutes," and, notwithstanding the fact that the clergy 
knew him to be a fugitive for heresy, they invited him 
to address them on three special occasions. At Du Til- 
let's request, he prepared a number of sermons, called 
"Christian Exhortations," to be used by the priests 
of the district. 

In 1534, the reformer boldly ventured to return to 
Paris, the case of Cop's address having been dropped 
at the request of Queen Marguerite, the King's sister. 
But when he arrived at Paris he found persecution of 
the Protestants raging so violently that it was unsafe 
for him to remain long. It was the "Tear of the Pla- 
cards." Every morning Paris saw little handbills 
posted up in the streets, on the doors of the churches 
and the university, and sometimes they found their way 



16 



JOHN CALVIN. 



even into the King's palace. One such placard against 
the mass exasperated the priests beyond bounds. A 
solemn street procession "to propitiate God's outraged 
majesty" was held on January 29, 1535. The sacred 
host which the reformers outraged by persistently call- 
ing it "bread" was carried under a canopy borne by the 
four chief dignitaries of the kingdom, the Dauphin and 
the Duke of Orleans, Vendome, and Angouleme. The 
King walked behind, bare-headed, with a torch in his 
hand, as if to make expiation for the kingdom. After 
a magnificently celebrated mass, the King repaired to 
the episcopal palace, seated himself upon the throne, 
and, surrounded by the clergy, the nobility and parlia- 
ment in their gorgeous robes, solemnly declared his in- 
tention of granting neither peace nor truce to him who 
should separate from the religion of the State. He was 
above all indignant that his good city of Paris "from 
time immemorial the head and pattern of all good Chris- 
tians" had not been protected from this "Protestant 
pestilence." "As for me, your King, if I knew that one 
of my members was tainted with this detestable error, 
I would lop it off, and if one of my children were in- 
fected, I would sacrifice him myself." On the same 
day, six fires, in six different parts of the city, con- 
sumed six Reformed men, one of whom was de la Forge,- 
the host and friend of Calvin. Torture was added to 
fire. The condemned, fastened to a long swinging beam, 
were to be plunged into the flames, then withdrawn, 
then plunged again, and then withdrawn once more, 
until life was extinct. Like Nero, the King of France 
wished that his victims should feel themselves die 
Moreover, like that Roman monster, he desired to be- 
hold their tortures with his own eyes. As he returned 



A FUGITIVE IN HIS OWN COUNTRY. 



17 



to the Louvre, he ordered his carriage to pass the six 
fires in succession. 

Calvin, who was forced to keep silence before this 
dreadful spectacle, resolved to seek an asylum elsewhere. 
Before he left, however, he had accepted a challenge 
from Michael Servetus to discuss with him the doctrine 




Calvin's Cave 



of the Trinity. Calvin, at the risk of his life, kept the 
appointed place and time, but Servetus did not make his 
appearance. Leaving Paris, Calvin returned to An- 
gouleme to take leave of T)u Tillet, but the latter de- 



18 



JOHN CALVIN. 



termined to accompany him. They stopped at Poitiers, 
where he organized a small congregation, and where the 
Lord's Supper was administered in a cave near the city, 
known to this day as "Calvin's Grotto." At Orleans, 
where they went, he wrote his first theological book on 
the "Sleep of the Soul," directed against the Anabap- 
tists' view, who maintained that the soul either perished 
with the body at death, or slept till the resurrection. 



CHAPTEE V. 



A PILGRIM IN FOREIGN LANDS. 

Constitutionally inclined to meditation rather than 
action, and seeing that he could not be of any assistance 
to his brethren in France, Calvin, after these wander- 
ings, decided to retreat to Strasburg in order to prose- 
cute his studies free from constant interruption. Du 
Tillet accompanied him. On their way to Metz, one 
of their two servants stole their money, and mounting 
the fleetest horse belonging to the party, made his 
escape. By borrowing what the other servant happened 
to possess, which amounted only to ten crowns, they ar- 
rived safely at Strasburg, a German imperial city, where 
13 years before the reformation had been introduced. 
Here is the place to introduce the reflections which 
Calvin made on that portion of his life which we have 
reviewed. Speaking of the change of his studies from 
theology to law quoted before, Calvin continues: "In 
deference to parental authority, I applied myself faith- 
ful to this new study; but God, by the secret sign cf 
his providence gave a different direction to my course. 
First, when I was obstinately addicted to the papal 
superstition and steeled with prejudice beyond my years, 
so as to resist all attempts to draw me from the miry 
pit, it pleased him, by a sudden conversion, to subdue 
my mind to docility. Being thus imbued with some 
relish for true piety, I became so inflamed with the de- 
sire to make some proficiency in divine knowledge, that 
other studies, though not altogether laid aside, were 
prosecuted with coldness ; and before a year had elapsed 
all the friends of the true doctrine had sought me, 

19 



20 



JOHN CALVIN. 



though as yet but a novice, for instruction. Naturally, 
somewhat diffident and always fond of ease, I courted 
retirement, but instead of obtaining it, my retreat re- 
sembled, a public school. In short, while my sole desire 
was to enjoy an inglorious ease, God so surrounded me 
by various windings that I could find it nowhere; and 
in spite of myself, I was drawn into the light. On that 
account, I resolved to leave my native country, and 
went to Germany in the hope of finding in some obscure 
corner, that retirement which I had long sought in 
vain." 

After a short time Calvin left Strasburg for Basel, as 
the place most suited for study. "You will find many 
conveniences here." writes Oecolampadius, the reformer 
of Basel, when inviting a friend to be professor in their 
university. "Healthful air, a pleasant situation, a 
people, since they embraced Christ, peaceable and simple 
in their manners; ready access to printers. Basel has 
always been a favorite city with learned men. Erasmus 
is indeed gone, to please the princess to whom he is 
under obligations, but it is my opinion that he will soon 
return." Before Calvin's arrival at Basel, her great 
reformer had died, but Calvin found a large number 
of othetf friends. Here he prosecuted the study t)f 
Hebrew, the first elements of which he had acquired 
before. 

His first work in Basel was the writing of a preface 
and a recommendation to the French translation of the 
Bible by his friend Olivetan, which has become the 
foundation of all subsequent translations inta the 
French tongue. This was followed by a larger and 
more important work, the composition of his epoch-mak- 
ing book — "The Institutes of the Christian Religion." 
This book was a necessity, both as a satisfaction to the 



A PILGRIM IN FOREIGN LANDS. 



21 



mind of the Church, and also that the Reformation 
might have something to oppose to the imposing and 
compact systems of the Middle Ages. Calvin accom- 
plished the task with decisive success. The external 
motive which led to the composition of the book was 
the gross misrepresentation of the Reformed doctrine 
by the King of France. The latter was in need of the 
Protestants of Germany in his war against the Emperor, 
Charles V. The Protestant princes of Germany refused 
to assist him for the reason that he persecuted their 
brethren in the faith in France. The king assured them 
that these "Reformed people were enemies of civil order, 
like the Anabaptists in Germany. What he punished 
in them, he said, was not their religious opinions but 
their social and political doctrines. This, of course, was 
a falsehood on the part of the King. Calvin, who had 
accumulated material in abundance, decided to vindicate 
his wronged brethren by stating and defending the 
doctrines for which JJhey bled and died. Remembering 
the purpose of the book, we can imagine the spirit that 
reigns in it. It is anything but a dry text-book of doc- 
trine. It has been called a poem in prose. The book, 
as published in Basel, in 1536, when its author was only 
26 years of age, was a small volume, which subsequent 
editions enlarged to many times its original size. It was 
written in Latin and afterwards translated into French, 
Italian, Spanish, Dutch, German, English, Hungarian, 
Greek and Arabic. Prefixed to it is a preface ad- 
dressed to Francis I, reminding the King of his respon- 
sibilities as a minister of God and pleading for his per- 
secuted brethren. During his whole life, Calvin never 
ceased revising and perfecting this book, though no 
changes in its essential contents were made. Of the eon- 
) tents of this monumental work we shall have occasion 



22 



JOHN CALVIN. 



to speak in a subsequent chapter. Its influence on pos- 
terity was immense. It passed through the creeds into 
the thoughts of men and nations, became the soul of 
Presbyterianism and Puritanism, of Kepublicanism in 
Holland and America, and lies at the basis of the Heidel- 
berg Catechism, whose authors, Zacharias Ursinus and 
Caspar Olevianus, were Calvin's pupils. 

Soon after the completion of the Institutes, Calvin left 
Basel and went to Italy, where he was hospitably re- 
ceived at the court of the deformed but accomplished 
little daughter of Louis XII, of France, Eenata, the 
Duchess of Ferrara, whose love of the gospel induced 
her to shield the persecuted Protestants. Here Calvin 
lived under the assumed name of Charles HippeviUe, 
and by his instructions confirmed the mind of the 
Duchess. Soon after his arrival the Duke entered into 
a treaty with the German Emperor and the Pope, by 
which he bound himself to remove all Frenchmen from 
his court. So Calvin had to leave again. An uncon- 
firmed report says that he was seized in his dwelling and 
was already on the way to Bologna to answer the charge 
of heresy when he was carried off, like Luther, by a 
masked horseman and restored to liberty. 

On his return he spent some time in Piedmont, most 
probably in visiting the "Waldensian churches, among 
whom his friend Olivetan continued to labor. Aosta was 
deeply agitated by the Eeformed faith at this time, but 
the town being too well guarded he could not enter. 

Calvin went to a farm close by, which to this day is 
known as "Calvin's Farm." The people flocked to him 
in large numbers. A political and religious revolution 
was in progress. He was in constant danger but 
remained. Warned that he was about to be arrested, he 
fled, on March eighth, accompanied by some of his ad- 




Calvin's Cross at Aosta 



24 



JOHN CALVIN. 



herents. As St. Bernard was guarded, they had to take 
by-paths, crossing torrents and scaling precipices; but 
even then they were in constant danger, for the Count 
of Chalans gave chase to Calvin, and pursued him with 
a drawn sword. But Calvin and his companions at 
length got beyond the territory of the Duranda, one of 
the lofty entrances of that region, and still designated 
by the name of "Calvin's Window." Many of the ad- 
herents of the Reformation who remained were impris- 
oned and burned at the stake, and in 1541 a cross was 
erected in the centre of the city recording the flight of 
Calvin and the deliverance of Aosta. This inscription, 
having become effaced by time, was replaced in 1841 
upon the restored monument, by those who wished the 
country to bless forever the day which thrust it back 
beneath the yoke of Eome. 

In the same year, 1536, Calvin visited Noyon owing 
to the death of his elder brother Charles, an ecclesiastic, 
but also, alas, a sceptic and a libertine. From here he 
resolved to return to Basel, that fair city on the Rhine, 
whose Reformed government, flourishing university, 
busy printing presses and learned society, made it so 
tempting an abode for a man of letters like Calvin. 
But again the hand of destiny seemed to be on our Re- 
former. "War had broken out between Charles V and 
Francis I and the direct route to Basel through Lorain 
was blocked. Calvin was compelled to make a long 
detour and thus late in August, 1536, we find him at 
Geneva. 



CHAPTER VI. 



FIRST MINISTRY IN GENEVA. 

Politically, Geneva was, when Calvin entered the city, 
what it is to-day, a little republic, a part of the French- 
speaking section of Switzerland. The state was governed 
by a council of twenty-five, consisting of four syndics, 
or magistrates, elected by the people, twenty counsellors 
and a treasurer. Over this was a council of sixty ; over 
this again a council of two hundred, and above all was 
a General Assembly of the whole body of the citizens. 

In 1532. William Farel first entered the city, preach- 
ing the Reformed faith. A fierce struggle began at once. 
But soon a church was conceded to the Protestant 
preachers. A disputation, after the usual fashion of 
the times, was held before the Council, in which the 
Romanists were worsted. In 1534, the bishop left the 
city and in 1536 a General Assembly of the people, 
"lifting up their hands, promised and swore to God 
that by his help they would live according to the holy 
evangelical religion and "Word of God lately preached 
to them, renouncing the mass, idols, images, and every 
other papal abuse.' ' 

Thus far had the Reformation advanced in Geneva 
on that memorable evening when Calvin entered its 
gates. He had intended to remain only a single night 
in the city and for this reason endeavored to keep his 
presence secret. But Farel had been advised of his ar- 
rival and hurried at once to the inn to urge Calvin to 
stay and help him in a work which he felt was beyond 
his ability. The scene that followed was dramatic in the 
extreme, and became the subject of a famous painting. 

25 



FIRST MINISTRY IN GENEVA. 



27 



Calvin, shrinking, with his whole soul, from the task 
which Farel sought to force upon him, made every ex- 
cuse he could think of. He was a studious man, he said ; 
he did not wish to bind himself to one church, but would 
endeavor to serve all; he was timid and loved retire- 
ment. But Farel was not to be daunted. With some- 
thing of the energy of an old Hebrew prophet, he sud- 
denly arose and placed himself dramatically before 
Calvin and proceeded in the most solemn manner to 
pronounce a curse on the studies of Calvin, if they kept 
him from coming to the help of the Lord in this great 
distress. "I declare unto thee," he said, "on the part 
of God, that if thou refuse to labor w T ith us here in 
God's work, he will curse thee; for in pleading thy 
studies as an excuse for abandoning us, thou seekest 
thyself more than God." Calvin tells us that this ad- 
dress filled him with such terror that he felt powerless 
to resist any longer. Being, during his whole life, a 
slave to what he conceived as duty, he laid aside his 
own preferences and at once obeyed the command of 
God through one of his servants. But the story can best 
be told in his own w T ords. He says, in the preface to his 
Commentary on the Psalms: "As the most direct route 
to Strasburg, to which I then intended to retire, w r as 
blocked by the wars, I had resolved to pass quickly 
to Geneva without staying longer than a single night 
in that city. A person, Louis Du Tillet, who has now 
returned to the Papists discovered me and made me 
known to others. Upon this Farel, who burned with 
an extraordinary zeal to advance the gospel, immediately 
strained every nerve to detain me. After having learned 
that my heart w r as set upon devoting myself to private 
studies, for which I wished to keep myself free from 
other pursuits, and finding that he gained nothing by 



LURST MINISTRY IN GENEVA. 



29 



entreaties, he proceeded to utter an imprecation that 
God would curse my retirement and the tranquility of 
the studies which I sought, if I should withdraw and 
refuse assistance when the necessity w T as so urgent. By 
this imprecation I was so stricken with terror that I 
desisted from the journey which I had undertaken. " 

Calvin's new office, which was not well defined, was 
for a time something between a professorship and preach- 
ing. His first employment was to deliver a course of 
lectures on theology which he began to read in St. 
Peter's Cathedral, in the month of August. He had 
not even a fixed salary, for we read in the council- 
registers, under date of Feb. 13, 1537. "Six gold crowns 
are given to Calvin, seeing that he has hitherto scarcely 
received anything. ' ' Soon after he began to preach and 
was admitted as one of the stated pastors of the city. 
At first the people seemed not much impressed by the 
reserved, frail young foreigner whose services their 
pastor was so anxious to secure. The council did not 
even interest itself enough to ask his name. The minute 
of the council, Sept. 5, 1536, simply says: "Master Wil- 
liam Farel stated the need for the lecture begun by this 
Frenchman at St. Peters. " Three months after his 
arrival, on Nov. 10th, the two Reformers achieved their 
first signal success in their endeavor to deepen and com- 
plete the real reformation of the Church. A Confession 
of Faith, composed of twenty-one Articles, was laid by 
Farel, who was the chief pastor, before the council, and 
adopted by that body. These Articles emphasized the 
intimate connection between faith and conduct. They 
provided that the Lord's Supper should be celebrated 
four times a year ; that baptism should be administered 
on any day, but only in the presence of a public con- 
gregation, and that marriages should also be celebrated 



30 



JOHN CALVIN. 



in public, after the proclamation of banns on three 
successive Sabbaths. Provision should be made for min- 
isters. All shops should be shut on Sabbaths during the 
service; images remaining in the churches should be 
taken down. The reputation of Farel was at this time 
at its highest point, an(J his admonitions to the council 
are repeatedly characterized in the minutes as ' ' divine. ? ' 

Calvin next directed attention to the schools, and 
sought to establish throughout the territory a system of 
compulsory education. This was especially necessary as 
the bishops had done nothing for public instruction. 
Calvin's idea of education included instruction in re- 
ligion and in order to provide a text-book, he prepared 
his famous catechism for children. It was practical, com- 
pact, breathing the spirit of true devotion. Many cate- 
chisms, especially the Westminster and Heidelberg Cate- 
chisms, drew inspiration and substance from Calvin's 
little book. Laws were already in force in Geneva when 
Calvin entered it, not only forbidding vice, but laying 
down regulations in regard to dress, food, ornament, and 
requiring attendance at public worship. The magis- 
trate warmly seconded his efforts to enforce these regu- 
lations. 



CHAPTER VII. 



STRUGGLES WITH THE LIBERTINES AND BANISH- 
MENT. 

These Articles and their subsequent uncompromising 
enforcement show us Calvin in a different light from 
what he appeared before. In place of the timid, retir- 
ing scholar, anxious only to be left alone with his books, 
we find him the ruler of men with a great genius for 
organization. His principles involved him in unend- 
ing conflict, but he ultimately triumphed and made 
Geneva the wonder of Christendom for civil order, pure 
morals, liberal learning and a home of arts and indus- 
tries. 

These measures could not be carried out without en- 
countering strong opposition, and a party soon de- 
veloped, hostile to the new regime. This party received 
the name of ' ' Libertine, ' ' and not unjustly, for obviously 
the best portion of the community was with Calvin and 
the soul of the opposition consisted of men of profligate 
and abandoned character. Only a few of the old patriot 
party, naturally jealous of Calvin's influence, joined 
them and demanded "more liberty." Government was 
paralyzed, and when the pastors demanded the excom- 
munication of some persons who were notoriously im- 
moral, the council w T ould not comply. This vote encour- 
aged the Libertine party, and the new elections on Feb. 
3, 1538, were decidedly in their favor. 

A point of even greater soreness with the Libertines 
than the rigor of the civil laws, was the power claimed 
by Calvin to debar unworthy persons from the sacra- 
ment. Zwingli and Luther had expressed similar ideas 

31 




Calvin's Pulpit in St. Peter's, Geneva 




Calvin's Chair still in St. Peter's at Geneva 



34 



JOHN CALVIN. 



but these remained pious wishes and little attempt was 
made to enforce these obviously right views. Calvin, on 
the other side, considered discipline a vital point for the 
purity of the Church and stood firm as a rock/ although 
his conduct exposed him and his associates to the coarsest 
public insults. The pastors courageously spoke from the 
pulpit on these questions, admonishing the people to sub- 
mit to these salutary laws, and censured the magistrate 
for failing to enforce them. The Libertines at this time, 
received reinforcements by two Anabaptists ("Be-bap- 
tizers") who had recently arrived at Geneva, and who 
hated Calvin in an especial manner because of his letter 
to the King of France, printed in his ''Institutes,'' in 
which he had disavowed all connection of the Beformed 
Church with these fanatical men. Germany, Holland, 
Switzerland, — in fact all "Western Europe was overrun 
by members of this fanatical sect. Their extravagant 
opinions tended to subvert Church and State alike. A 
visible kingdom of God was their ideal. One of these 
emissaries, Caroli, went so far as to attack Calvin's 
orthodoxy and even had him brought before a synod 
to clear himself of the charge of denying the true Deity 
of Christ. When blamed by Caroli for not accepting 
the ancient creeds, Calvin rejoined that the Genevan min- 
istry had sworn to the belief in one God and not to the 
creed of Athanasius, whose symbol a true church would 
never have admitted. Calvin gained a victory over them 
and the two men were expelled from the city on March 
19. Later, in 1544, he issued a "Brief Instruction for 
arming every Believer against the Errors of the Ana- 
baptists." The Libertines were disappointed and tried 
again to down the Beformed preachers. 

While this dispute was still proceeding, a new embar- 
rassment arose which hastened a revolution. The Befor- 



STRUGGLES WITH THE LIBERTINES. 



35 



mation in Berne and other German cantons of Switzer- 
land was less radical than that of Geneva. They 
retained customs which Geneva did not admit. Geneva 
used common bread at communion. Berne used unleav- 
ened bread. Geneva had removed the baptismal fonts 
from the churches. Berne had left them. Geneva ob- 
served Sunday only. Berne had retained the chief holy 
days of the Church Year. The Bernese asked that on 
these points the people of Geneva should do as they did. 
Farel and Calvin opposed the demand, and this was 
reason enough for the Libertines to side with the Bern- 
ese. A Synod was held at Lausanne to deliberate upon 
the points at issue and Farel and Calvin attended. The 
Synod adopted the views of Berne and the reformers 
appealed to the approaching Synod at Zurich and re- 
turning to Geneva, they requested that no innovation 
be made before "Whitsuntide, when the decision of Zurich 
would be known. Calvin pledged himself to submit if 
Zurich should decide the same as Lausanne. But this 
did not suit the Libertines. 

Matters reached a crisis on Easter Day, 1538. Dur- 
ing the previous week the city had been torn with dis- 
sensions. Bands of Libertines ran through the streets 
at night, stopping before the pastors' dwellings and yell- 
ing at the top of their voices: "To the Rhone J To the 
Rhone!" and firing off their guns. They organized a 
masquerade in which scenes from the gospel were 
parodied; dances, songs, excesses of every kind were 
exhibited during those deplorable days and shameful 
nights. When Easter dawned, the church bells seemed 
to toll the death-knell of Protestant Geneva. Farel 
preached at St. Gervais and Calvin at the Cathedral of 
St. Peters. Farel at once noticed among the audience the 
most fiery and disreputable of the Libertines, but the 



3b 



JOHN CALVIN. 



fearless preacher declared that he would not aid them 
in the profanation of the Lord's Supper and that com- 
munion would not be administered to-day. He insisted 
that there must be faith and charity and repentance, 
and then in conclusion asked them how they passed the 
last night. Several times during the sermon he was in- 
terrupted, but his voice rose above the tumult. At the 
conclusion of his sermon, when he refused to administer 
communion, several furious men rushed toward the 
pulpit with drawn swords. Farel held his peace, crossed 
his arms and awaited them. But his friends were also 
numerous. They surrounded him and conducted him 
home. A similar scene took place at St. Peter's Cathe- 
dral, where Calvin preached. 

On Easter Monday, the Council held a hurried meet- 
ing and passed the sentence of banishment against the 
two courageous ministers, and on Tuesday this action was 
ratified by the General Council. One of Calvin's friends 
said to the majority of the Council: "You hated the 
priests because they were too much like you; you hate 
the Reformed preachers because they are too much un- 
like you." 



CHAPTER VIII. 



MINISTRY AT STRASBURG. 

Calvin received the decision of banishment with calm- 
ness, remarking, "Had Ave been the servants of men, 
we would now be ill repaid, but we serve a great master, 
who never lets those who serve him go unrewarded and 
who ever pays them what he does not owe them." Then, 
in company with Farel, he left the city and repaired to 
Berne for the purpose of explaining to the government 
the true state of things, viz : that the discussion on the 
unleavened bread had been a pretext only, , that with 
some of the leaders it was liberty for the flesh and with 
others the restoration of Eomanism. At Zurich the two 
exiles met wdth the most cordial reception. Bullinger, 
the successor of Zwingli, suggested asking the Bernese 
government to intercede with Geneva for the restora- 
tion of Calvin and Farel. They did so, but Geneva re- 
fused to comply with the request. Thereupon the Re- 
formers went to Basel. Scarcely had they arrived, when 
Calvin received letters from Bucer, strongly urging him 
to come to Strasburg. He resisted at first, but consented 
afterwards, and separated himself from Farel, w r hom so 
many common trials had rendered ever dearer to him. 
Strasburg welcomed Calvin with joy. The three years 
which he spent Tiere in peace and tranquility were per- 
haps the happiest Calvin ever knew, save for interrup- 
tions of bodily sickness, the effects of toil and anxiety 
upon a frame not naturally strong. 

At Strasburg, Calvin branched out into four lines of 
activity — preaching, teaching, waiting and counselling 
for the welfare of the Church. The town council au- 

37 



38 



JOHN CALVIN. 



thorized him to give public lectures on the Bible and 
afterwards to organize a church composed of French 
refugees whom persecution had thrown into Strasburg. 




The Madeline, Calvin's Church at Strasburg: 



and who could not .understand the services in this Ger- 
man city on the- upper Rhine. They were allowed the 
use of the building, now called the New Church. But 
the council did not pay him a salary. His letters repre- 



MINISTRY AT STRASBURG. 



39 



sent him as being in actual misery. Du Tillet, the 
wealthy priest, offered him assistance, but he refused it. 
"You make me,' '.he says, "an offer for which I cannot 
sufficiently thank you, and I am not so unmanly as not 
to appreciate its great kindness. But I will abstain 
from burdening any one. At present my board costs 
me nothing. Other needs will be supplied by the money 
from the books." Later he wrote to Farel, "Du Tillet 
offered me money, but at too high interest. Did he mean 
to convert me?" Farel, who was settled at Neuchatel, 
had also offered him aid, but Calvin refused it, saying, 
"I have taken an engagement with myself to accept 
nothing from thee, nor from our mutual friends, so 
long as I am not absolutely constrained to do so. The 
books which I have left at Geneva will pay my landlord 
till next Winter." 

At Strasburg, in 1539, he revised, recast and greatly 
enlarged his "Institutes," giving the book substantially 
its present form. As pastor, he had to preach every 
evening. As professor, he gave a lecture every morn- 
ing on the Gospel of John, and by so doing amassed the 
materials for the series of great commentaries, the first 
of which, that on Romans, appeared in Strasburg, also 
in 1539. These noble books, in their sober regard for the 
historical and grammatical sense of Scripture, in their 
skill in detecting, and aptness in expressing the meaning 
of the sacred writers, bear so remarkably modern a char- 
acter, that no expounder can afford to disregard them. 
His lectures, as at Geneva, soon attracted great num- 
bers, but the hearers were more accomplished than those 
at Geneva. France continued to send many fugitives, 
eager to hear and see the author of the Institutes. Some 
Frenchmen came of their own free will, being attracted 
by the preacher's fame. The city council of Strasburg 



40 



JOHN CALVIN. 



rejoiced at the homage paid to the new professor. He 
was presented with the freedom of the city — a privilege 
highly prized in an old imperial city like Strasburg. His 
salary was increased and he seemed to have little co re- 
gret or desire. 

But amid all his pleasant surroundings and employ- 
ment at Strasburg, Calvin could not forget Geneva. As 
early as Oct. 1, 1538, less than three months after hav- 
ing left the city, he addressed a long and touching letter 
to his "well-beloved brethren in our Lord, who are the 
relics of the dispersion of the Church of Geneva/' in 
which he writes : 

"Though discharged for the present from the admin- 
istration of the Church at Geneva, nevertheless this can- 
not deprive me of bearing towards her a paternal love 
and charity ; towards her, I say, over whom God once or- 
dained me and so has obliged me for ever to keep faith 
and loyalty with her." 

But besides Calvin, two other men were also watching 
Geneva — the expelled Bishop of Geneva, and Pope Paul 
III. With joy did the Romanists learn of the banish- 
ment of the Reformed leaders, and the subsequent dis- 
order. One of the councilmen, Philippe, the arch enemy 
of Calvin, who later died a traitor's death, went to 
Lyons, in France, to treat personally with the former 
bishop with a view to restoring Romanism in Geneva, 
The archbishops of Lyons, Besancon, Vienne and Turin, 
and the bishops of Lausanne, Langres and Carpentras 
formed a committee of ways and means to accomplish 
the feat. Cardinal-bishop Sadolet was appointed to con- 
duct the negotiations in as careful and prudent a way 
as that wily prelate knew. He sent his famous "Letter 
to the Senate and People of Geneva" — an able, adroit 
epistle, unique in its way, in the sixteenth century. But 



MINISTRY AT STRASBURG. 



4-1 



its effect was not what he had hoped. There was not 
enough Romish sentiment in the city. The letter aroused 
the people as from a dream, their eyes being opened to 
the impending danger and they became alert. 

The Reformed pastors who were still at Geneva did 
not feel equal to the task of answering the Cardinal's 
Letter. It was Calvin in Strasburg who composed a reply 
which completely demolished the flimsy ' ' arguments ' ' of 
Sadolet and is of such great biographical value that we 
found occasion in several places of this book to quote 
some of its choicest passages. The letter was received 
with great joy all over Europe, and no reply was ever 
attempted by the Romanists. Luther enjoyed it, thor- 
oughly. In his dramatic way of expressing his ideas, the 
German Reformer wrote : ' ' Here is a writing which has 
hands and feet. I rejoice that God raises up such men. 
They will continue what I have begun against the 
Romish Anti-Christ." 



CHAPTER IX. 



RELATIONS WITH THE GERMAN REFORMERS. 

During his stay at Strasburg, Calvin entered into 
more intimate relations with the German reformers. The 
German Emperor, Charles V, a bigoted Romanist, was 
at this time engaged in schemes of mediation between 
Protestants and Romanists, and Calvin went as dele- 
gate to several diets and conferences held at Frankfurt 
(1539), Worms, Hagenau (1540), and Ratisbon, where 
he met Philip Melancthon and other leaders of the Ger- 
man reformation. At this period the religious question 
was uppermost among all nations and the discussion on 
the Lord's Supper grew especially warm among the 
Lutherans and the Reformed. By comparing views, 
Calvin and Melancthon soon found that their ideas on 
this doctrine were similar, though by no means alike. 
On the principle that the stronger character necessarily 
exerts the strongest influence on his surroundings, we 
are justified in supposing that it was Melancthon who 
came over to Calvin 's side, rather than the reverse. But 
to allay all suspicion on the part of the Swiss divines 
that it was he who had made concessions to Melancthon, 
Calvin wrote his treatise "Of the Lord's Supper," while 
he was still residing at Strasburg. Aside, however, from 
theological agreement, Calvin and Melancthon at these 
gatherings learned to love each other as true friends. 
"When Magister Philippus died, Calvin bewailed him 
in these words : " Philip Melancthon, a hundred times 
hast thou said to me, when weary with toil and vexation, 
thou didst lean thy head upon my bosom, 4 would to God, 
would to God, that I might die on thy bosom ! 9 As for 

42 



RELATIONS WITH THE GERMAN REFORMERS. 



43 



me, later, a hundred times have I wished that it had 
been granted us to be together. Certainly thou wouldst 
have been bolder to face struggles, more courageous to 
despise envy and calumny. Then, also, would have been 
suppressed the malignity of many whose audacity in- 
creased in proportion to what they called thy weakness. ' ' 

His friendship was sincere enough to chide Melanc- 
thon. " Either I understand nothing in holy things, " 
he writes to Melancthon in 1551, "or you ought not to 
have yielded thus to the Papists. We should not be 
afraid to write with our ink upon paper what so many 
martyrs write daily with their blood upon the scaffold. 
I speak with all frankness. My sole desire is that noth- 
ing should distress the truly divine greatness of your 
soul. If I appear to you vehement, it is because I would 
a hundred times rather die with you for the truth, than 
see you survive the truth betrayed by you. Is this to 
say that I mistrust you ? No ; but I desire you to take 
sufficient precautions so that your easiness should not 
furnish the impious with the opportunity which they 
seek of scoffing at God's truth." 

It is unfortunate that on these different journeys 
Calvin never met with Luther, the more so as both men 
respected each other very highly. His veneration of 
Luther made Calvin very sensitive of the opinion of the 
German nestor of the reformation concerning himself. 
In 1539 he, with great joy, tells Farel of the kind words 
which Luther had charged Bucer to transmit to him. 
' ' Bucer, ' ' he says, ' 6 has received from Luther a letter in 
which are these words: 6 Salute from me Calvin, whose 
works I have read with singular pleasure.' " Calvin 
asked with no less joy, 6 6 Behold the candor of Luther ! 
"Why, then, are these people who separate from him so 
obstinate?" In another letter Luther speaks of Cal- 



44 



JOHN CALVIN, 



vin as "a man of excellent capacity/ ' During the con 
troversy on the Lord's Supper, Calvin writes to Bul- 
linger, the successor of Zwingli, "I conjure thee never 
to forget how eminent a man Luther is, and with what 
gifts he is endowed. Think with what strength of soul, 
what immovable perseverance, what potency of doctrine, 
he has devoted himself till now to the overthrowing 
of Anti-Christ. As for me, I have often said, and I still 
repeat it, if he were to call me a devil, I should not 
cease to hold him in great esteem, and to acknowledge in 
him an illustrious servant of God." And some months 
after, he writes to Luther himself: "Farewell, most il- 
lustrious man, eminent minister of Christ, father forever 
venerable to me. May the Lord continue to direct thee 
by His Spirit, for the common good of His Church." 
Calvin constantly hoped for an understanding on the 
question of the Sacrament, and the conviction never left 
him that if Luther had lived longer and both men had 
been permitted to meet, the master would have been 
more accommodating than the disciples. 



CHAPTER X. 



CALVIN'S MARRIAGE AND HOME LIFE. 

Another more tender interest attaches to Calvin's 
sojourn in Strasburg. It was here that Calvin was 
married. 

The reformer was past thirty years of age when he 
began to think seriously of selecting a partner in life. 
Well-meaning friends of his had thought of it long be- 
fore he did. This is evident from a letter to his co- 
worker, William Farel, in which he writes: "Friends are 
urging me to marry a young lady of a noble family, 
above my station in life and very rich. But I refused 
for two reasons: first, because she does not understand 
our language (French), and, secondly, because I am 
afraid that she might think too much of her noble birth 
and fine education." 

When, in 1539, Calvin came to Strasburg, his friends 
there urged him still more to select a wife. He assented, 
provided they would find him a suitable partner, re- 
serving, of course, to himself the final decision. His 
ideal, he told them, was not a beautiful face or graceful 
form, but a helpmeet who was kind, pure-hearted, meek, 
frugal, patient, and to whom the care for her husband 
would be the first consideration. Very likely he laid 
special stress on this latter qualification, because his 
health was constantly impaired. In this vein he wrote 
to Farel: "Would you know what kind of beauty could 
alone win my soul? It is kindness and modesty, linked 
to simplicity, contentment and meekness/ ' 

It was Idelette de Burre who came up to this ideal, 
and this fact is in itself sufficient proof of her noble 

45 



46 



JOHN CALVIN. 



and dignified character, and it also explains the promi- 
nent position she holds among the women of the Re- 
formed Church. When Calvin married her, she had 
been a widow with several children for some years. For 
conscience 's sake she had fled from Liege and afterwards 
married Johann Storder, a Baptist. Later on both were 
converted to the Eeformed faith by Calvin's own instru- 
mentality. He therefore knew her before her first hus- 
band died. But in her widowed state she led such a 
retired life that Calvin would never have thought of 
her, if Bucer, who also knew her as wife, widow and 
mother, had not called his attention to her. The re- 
former proposed to her and was accepted. 

The marriage took place on August 1, 1540, and 
proved to be a great event. Several of the Swiss cantons 
sent delegates, and Calvin's friends from France were 
also present. He was very happy after his marriage, for 
he experienced what the Bible says: " Whoso findeth a 
wife, findeth a good thing, and obtaineth favor of the 
Lord." (Prov. 18: 22.) Their mode of living was one 
of extreme simplicity and frugality. When Cardinal 
Sadolet visited Geneva, he desired to see Calvin's 
"palace," and his surprise was great when he was 
shown to the little and insignificant home of the man 
whose powerful influence was felt throughout Europe. 
An only son was the fruit of this union, and he died 
when still very young. 

Soon after their marriage, Calvin was obliged to leave 
his wife in order to attend several most important po- 
litical conferences at Hagenau and Worms, to which 
the church of Strasburg had sent him as a delegate. No 
sooner had he left his home, than the city was visited 
by a terrible plague. His duty to the vital interests of 
Protestantism compelled him to remain at these confer- 



CALVIN^ MARRIAGE AND HOME LIFE. 



47 



ences, instead of, as his heart prompted him, returning 
to his family. His brother Antoine, in whose charge he 
had left them, fled from Strasburg, and Calvin feared 
the worst for his wife. He wrote to a friend: "Day and 
night my wife stands before me, surrounded by all the 
horrors of this terrible plague, without help and coun- 
sel, and I, her husband, far away. I make the strongest 
efforts to banish from my mind this consuming agony 
by taking refuge to prayer." The Lord granted his 
prayers, his wife's life was saved, and on his return, the 
reunion was the more joyful and affectionate for the 
danger past. 

"When Calvin was recalled to Geneva, Idelette still 
more revealed the qualities of a faithful and devoted 
wife. Her own health being impaired, she was never- 
theless a devoted nurse in her husband's oft-recurring 
attacks of sickness. She tried to cheer him in his hours 
of mental depression and bodily weakness. Often we 
find her at his bedside, his weary head in her arms, sooth- 
ing the painful headaches which were the thorns in the 
flesh of the great reformer. She accompanied him in 
his walks through the park of the city, which he under- 
took but too rarely. When the mob of the Libertines 
like a fury roared through the streets of Geneva, so that 
the lives of the ministers were in great danger, she re- 
tired to her room and bent her knees in fervent prayer 
to God for protection. She never tired of visiting the 
sick and comforting the afflicted in the congregation. 
Her house was an ever open refuge to those persecuted 
for conscience's sake. In all this she was herself en- 
compassed by many trials and afflictions. One after the 
other of her children were taken by death. She wept 
for her children like Rachel, but yet differed from 



48 



JOHN CALVIN. 



Rachel for she was comforted, knowing that her children 
were with the Lord. 

After nine years of happy married life, Idelette Cal- 
vin was called to her reward. In 1548 she became seri- 
ously ill. For three years previously she had suffered 
from a slowly consuming fever, which at last broke her 
down completely. Her husband was greatly alarmed 
when he realized the imminent danger of losing her. 
In spite of the best medical treatment and care she rap- 
idly approached her end. Only one thing seemed to 
trouble her exceedingly the nearer that end came — the 
future welfare of her children by her first marriage. 
Calvin noticed this and readily assured her that he 
would care for them as if they were his own children. 
She replied : " I have committed them to the Lord, and 
I know that you will not cast out what I have committed 
to Him." Thus her heart was relieved of its last care, 
and now she waited quietly and patiently to be re- 
leased. In spite of her great suffering, her countenance 
beamed with a peace which reigned in her heart. One 
morning she suddenly exclaimed: "0 glorious resurrec- 
tion ; ' 9 and then she prayed aloud : " God of Abraham 
and of all our fathers! The faithful in all times have 
put their trust in Thee, and have never been confounded. 
I also trust in Thee, vouchsafe mercy to me that I may 
do so to the end. ' ' On the evening of her last day, after 
her friends had tried to ease her, she said to them: 
"Pray, my friends, pray for me." Calvin bent over 
her, reminding her, though with trembling voice, of the 
mercy of God and of the power from on high, which is 
mighty in our weakness, as well as of the glorious eter- 
nity and the joys of heaven, which she was soon to in- 
herit. Then he prayed with her for the last time, com- 
mitting her to Him in whom both believed. At nine 



calvin's marriage and home life. 



49 



o'clock of the same evening she fell asleep, peacefully 
and calmly. 

Calvin could never forget his Idelette, and he never 
thought of filling her place by a second wife. As often 
as he mentioned her name, a certain vibration in his 
voice indicated how dear she had been to him. After 
her departure he wrote to Viret: "Because you know 
the tenderness, or rather the weakness of my heart, you 
are convinced that I could not have borne this pain if 
I had not concentrated the whole power of my soul in 
God. The best of partners has been taken from me. 
She was willing to share with me banishment and want, 
and would have gone with me into death. She was also 
a great help in my official life. " 

Idelette Calvin is a worthy companion to Katharina 
von Bora, Luther's wife, and to Anna Reinhart, 
Zwingli's wife. That we know comparatively so little of 
her individual life is no doubt due, as d'Aubigne cor- 
rectly remarks, to the fact that Calvin did not write 
nearly as much and so frequently of his wife as Luther 
did of his "Kaethe." Nevertheless she was, as we have 
seen, as dear to him; and for this reason it is proper 
that we should also cherish her memory as the faithful 
life-partner of the great John Calvin. 



CHAPTER 



XI 



RECALL TO GENEVA AND RECONSTRUCTION 
WORK. 

Geneva, by this time, had bitterly repented its treat- 
ment of its faithful preachers. Only disorder had reign- 
ed since their departure. The citizens had had a taste 
of Libertine rule, and did not relish it. All was laxity, 
powerlessness and anarchy. The teachers had refused 
to carry out the command of the enemies of Calvin to 
administer the Lord's Supper according to the Bernese 
rite, and were also banished and the schools closed. The 
Libertines, in March, 1539, went up to the town hall 
demanding to be released from the moral part of the 
Confession of Faith which they had sworn to under 
Calvin. Eomish priests began saying mass in private 
houses. Laws were set at nought. The grossest licen- 
tiousness prevailed. Of the four syndics who expelled 
Calvin, one was found guilty of promoting an insurrec- 
tion, and endeavoring to escape through a window, fell 
and broke his neck. Another was accused of murder 
and beheaded. Two others, guilty of treason, were 
obliged to flee. No power existed in the city itself, ca- 
pable of restoring order, and soon the cry arose from the 
government, the pastors and the people, to bring Calvin 
back. 

But although his heart was in Geneva, Calvin hesi- 
tated to return. "Why not rather submit to be cruci- 
fied ?" he says in one of his letters, "It would be better 
to perish at once than to be tormented to death in that 
chamber of torture." Farel, who had found congenial 
work at Neuchatel, urged him to return. The minutes 

50 



RECALL TO GENEVA. 



51 



of the Genevan council are full of items showing the 
progress which was made in getting Calvin to come 
back. On Sept. 21, 1540, Perrin is charged "to find 
means to bring back Master Calvin. " On October 13th 
it was resolved to write a letter "to Monsieur Calvin 
that he would assist us, ' ' and to ask the pastors in Stras- 
burg to influence him to return. On Oct. 19th it was 
resolved ' ' in order that the honor and glory of God may 
be promoted to seek all possible means to have Master 
Calvin as preacher." On October 20th, they ordered 
a delegation sent to Strasburg "to fetch Master Jean 
Calvinus, who is very learned, to be minister in this 
city." 

At length he consented, and re-entered Geneva on 
Sept. 13, 1541, amidst general popular enthusiasm. 
Twenty-three years more were given him to labor among 
this gifted people on the beautiful Lake Leman. The 
magistrate provided him with a house and garden, gave 
him cloth for a coat, and voted him a salary of 500 
florins, twelve measures of wheat and two tuns of wine. 

The next five years of his life, from 1541 to 1546, were, 
on the whole, peaceful and serene. They may be termed 
the period of reconstruction. A new constitution, em- 
bracing the life of the people in Church and State, was 
introduced and perfected. A Christian republic, bear- 
ing the character of a "theocracy" was established, — 
that is, a State whose ruler is God, and in which God's 
will is to be done — no doubt a grand conception ! Con- 
structing the Genevan republic under the guidance of 
this idea, Calvin was instrumental in having enacted 
three codes of laws, a revised form of Church govern- 
ment, a new code of civil laws and the famous "Eccle- 
siastical Ordinances," a code of morals, for which he is 
best known. It laid down rules for the regulation of the 



52 



JOHN CAT/VIN. 



life of the citizens of Geneva, entering minutely into 
social and even domestic details, but especially aiming 
at the suppression of the darker vices — profanity, drink- 
ing, gambling, lewdness and the like. This code un- 
doubtedly went too far in interfering with individual 
liberty, but to view this matter in a historical spirit, it 
is important to remember that the " go-as-you-please ' ' 
doctrine of government is essentially modern. Sumptu- 
ary laws regulating the details of life were not peculiar 
to Geneva. They were in great favor in England from 
the time of Edward III down to the Reformation. One 
law under that King enacts that no man of whatever 
condition or estate, shall be allowed more than two 
courses- at dinner or supper or more than two kinds of 
food in each course, except on the principal festivals 
of the year, when three courses at the utmost are to be 
allowed. All who did not enjoy a free estate of five 
hundred dollars for a year were prohibited from wear- 
ing fur, skins or silk, and the use of foreign cloth was 
allowed to the royal family alone. It must also be re- 
membered that most of the provisions of Calvin's "Ordi- 
nances" were based on existing laws. "It can be 
shown," says Dr. Hagenbach, "that strict prohibitions 
against cursing and blaspheming, against games of 
chance, masquerades, dances, magnificence in dress, etc., 
had been issued by the Genevan government as early as 
the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century, 
and that Calvin, consequently, cannot be regarded as the 
originator of such laws." Calvin drafted the code, but 
the council revised and amended it. Calvin, therefore, 
cannot fairly be held responsible for everything the code 
contains. Dr. Lindsay, in his "History of the Reforma- 
tion, ' ' quotes a long list of laws showing that the citizens 
of every mediaeval town lived under a municipal dis- 



RECALL TO GENEVA. 



53 



cipline which we would pronounce vexatious and des- 
potic. He continues : ' ' Every instance quoted by mod- 
ern historians to prove, as they think, Calvin's despotic 
interference with the details of private life, can be 
paralleled by references to the police books of mediaeval 
towns in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. To make 
them ground of accusation against Calvin is simply to 
plead ignorance of the whole municipal police of the later 
Middle Ages. To say that Calvin acquiesced in or ap- 
proved of such legislation is simply to show that he be- 
longed to the sixteenth century." 

The Church Constitution provides for four kinds 
of officers, — namely, pastors, teachers, elders and dea- 
cons. The rights and duties of each group are carefully 
described. The city was divided into parishes, and a 
pastor was allotted to each. Baptism was administered 
only by the pastor ; godfathers were refused if they were 
notoriously of a worldly-minded spirit, not being in a 
state to promise to the Church to be spiritually a father 
to the child. The Lord's Supper was to be celebrated 
in the churches only — four times a year, at Easter, at 
Whitsuntide, the first Sunday in September, and the 
Sunday nearest Christmas day. Only the Sabbath, be- 
cause of divine institution, was observed; the holy days 
of the church year, even Christmas day and Easter, were 
disregarded. Every child was to attend regular cate- 
chisation until, when sufficiently instructed, he was ad- 
mitted, "in presence of the Church to make profession 
of his Christianity." It was absolutely forbidden to ap- 
proach the Lord's table before catechisation. Calvin 
draws a clear distinction between the Roman Catholic 
and the Episcopal idea of confirmation, and the con- 
ception of the Reformed Church concerning this ancient 
rite, when, in the fourth book of his "Institutes," he 



54 



JOHN CALVIN. 



writes as follows: "It was anciently customary for the 
children of Christians, after they had grown up, 
to appear before the chief pastor and people, to fulfill 
that duty which was required of such adults as pre- 
sented themselves for baptism. The infants, therefore, 
who had been initiated by baptism, not having then 
given a confession of faith to the Church, were again, 
toward the end of their boyhood, or on adolescence, 
brought forward by their parents, and w^ere examined 
by the pastor in terms of the Catechism which was then 
in common use. In order that this act, which otherwise 
justly required to be grave and holy, might have more 
reverence and dignity, the ceremony of laying on of 
hands w^as used." Then, having argued against the 
papal and prelatical perversion of this primitive rite, 
Calvin continued: "I wish we could retain the custom 
of confirmation, which, as I have observed, existed in the 
early church before this abortive mask of a sacrament 
appeared. 1 9 

The Constitution also orders that a yearly visitation 
should be made from house to house, to examine every 
one as to his faith, in order that no one may come to 
the Lord's Supper without knowing what is the founda- 
tion of his salvation. The visit is to be made in each 
parish before Easter, by the pastor accompanied by an 
elder, and by the "tithing man" of the district. The 
pastor is to visit the sick all the year round; in order 
"that no one may die without admonition or instruction, 
which is then more necessary than ever to a man." A 
weekly visit is also to be paid to the prisoners by the 
pastor. 

Calvin was the friend of a plain but orderly and 
solemn form of worship. The liturgy which bears his 
name has been composed from material of the forms of 



RECALL TO GENEVA. 



55 



worship used in Strasburg and other places. He is in favor 
of brief prayers. 6 1 It is better to pray at length in pri- 
vate and briefly in the assemblies. If thou expectest 
from all an ardor equal to thine own, thou art mis- 
taken." He favored the singing of the psalms, which 
was deemed so important, that it became almost a kind 
of profession of faith; " psalm-singer" and "Keformed" 
were almost synonymous words in France. Marot's 
psalms were first used in 1548. The Psalter was aug- 
mented by Beza. But Calvin insisted upon having the 
exact prose translation of the Hebrew text, printed at 
the foot of the page. He did not wish to have attributed 
to the Psalmist what resulted perhaps from the exigencies 
of versification. 

Every preacher was at first appointed to his own spe- 
cial church building. In August, 1542, Calvin decided 
that they should all preach in turn in all the city pul- 
pits, "in order that the people might be better edified, 
and might profit by all the ministers. " It was also 
in strict conformity to the apostolic principle of the 
equality of the pastors, that neither title nor official 
privilege ever distinguished one pastor from the other. 
Calvin w T as not in favor of long sermons. "There is one 
thing of which I would speak to thee," he writes one 
day to Farel. "It is said that the length of thy sermons 
is a subject of complaint. Thou hast told me thyself 
more than once, that thou wouldst take heed thereto; 
forget it not, I pray thee. And since it is not for our 
own edification that the Lord calls upon us to ascend 
the pulpit, but for that of the people, it is incumbent 
on thee to moderate thyself in such a way that the Word 
of God may not have to suffer, because thou hast wearied 
them." Calvin preferred the topical method of preach- 



56 



JOHN CALVIN. 



ing, which requires the choosing of a definite subject for 
each sermon. 

In the civil department, Calvin undertook the revision 
of the laws, some of which dated from ancient times. 
Under his oversight, the laws and edicts of the State 
were collected, such changes were made on them as were 
necessary, and the whole was reduced to a well-digested 
code. 

The judicatories instituted by Calvin to enforce these 
laws were the secular councils and the church consistory, 
the latter being a new court, composed of the pastors 
and twelve laymen, the latter to be appointed by the 
councils to form the link between the two jurisdictions. 
That part of Calvin's reformatory work which had to 
do with the consistory and its functions exerted a tre- 
mendous influence on all the Reformed Churches in all 
sections of the world, and indirectly on civil govern- 
ment, an influence which is felt to this very day. The 
logical consequence of Calvin's principles of govern- 
ment would lead to an entire separation of Church and 
State. The American churches have followed out his 
ideas to their legitimate conclusion, but Calvin's sub- 
lime conception of a theocracy did not allow him to 
draw the inevitable consequences which his premises de- 
manded. It was only recently, June 30th, 1907, at a ref- 
erendum demanded, it is true, by the socialists, that 
Geneva severed the connection between Church and State 
which had existed for over a thousand years under vari- 
ous forms, 



CHAPTER 



XII. 



RENEWED CONFLICT WITH THE LIBERTINES. 

Calvin's struggles were not at an end. After five 
years of peace, in 1546, Libertinism reared up its head 
again, and with brief intermissions the conflict lasted 
fully nine years, during which period Calvin was in con- 
stant danger of being expelled again. This time Liber- 
tinism is seen in darker colors than before. It now ap- 
peared in connection with Pantheistic and Atheistic doc- 
trines, breathing a fierce hatred of Christ, and openly 
justifying the most shameless immorality. ' ' The Liber- 
tines or Spirituals," says Dr. Philip S chaff, combined a 
Pantheistic creed with licentiousness and free-lovism, 
and anticipated the worst forms of modern infidelity 
to the extent of declaring the gospel a tissue of lies of 
less value than Aesop's fables. Their leader was Perrin, 
the captain-general, a former friend of Calvin 's, but now 
on account of some proceedings taken against his wife's 
relations, the reformer's bitterest enemy. Perrin de- 
manded that the council should deprive the consistory 
of its power of excommunication and should take that 
power in its own hands. After several failures, he was 
elected First Syndic and the old complaint was renewed. 
Calvin behaved with great courage. He presented him- 
self in 1547 before the Council of the Two Hundred, and 
facing the drawn swords of his enemies, said, "If it is 
my life you desire, I am ready to die. If it is my ban- 
ishment you wish, I shall exile myself. If you desire 
once more to save Geneva without the Gospel, you can 
try." This ended the matter for the time. 

A second crisis in the struggle with the Libertines was 

57 



58 



JOHN CALVIN. 



in 1553. Calvin's influence in this year was at its low- 
est ebb. Popular feeling ran strongly against him. His 
enemies, insolent in their triumph, ' 1 resorted to personal 
indignities and every device of intimidation ; they named 
the very dogs of the street after him; they once fired 
fifty shots before his bed chamber ; they threatened him 
in the pulpit. At this time a Libertine by the name of 
Berthelier appeared before the council, asking it to 
rescind a sentence of excommunication passed upon him 
by the consistory. Calvin withstood him, but Perrin's 
influence prevailed, and the council reversed the sentence 
as desired. It went further, and transferred the power 
of excommunication from the consistory to the council. 
This decision was ratified in the popular assembly. The 
next Sabbath was the day of communion in St. Peter's 
Cathedral. Curiosity was strung to its highest pitch, for 
Berthelier was expected to present himself, bearing the 
warrant he had received from the council. A French 
biographer of Calvin gives the following graphic de- 
scription of the occasion. "On the third of September, 
at the customary hour, Calvin ascended the pulpit of the 
ancient cathedral. He perceived in the audience the 
insolent group of Libertines, perhaps already ill at ease 
because they felt themselves isolated in the midst of the 
crowded congregation, and with Calvin in front of them. 
But the reformer did not seem to see them. As calm 
as ever, externally at least, he preached upon the state 
of mind with which the Lord's Table ought to be ap- 
proached. Then he added, 'As for me, so long as God 
shall leave me here, I will employ the fortitude which He 
gave me, whatever betide, and I will guide myself, by 
my Master's rule, which is to me clear and well-known. 
As we are to receive the Lord's Supper, if any one to 
whom it has been forbidden by the consistory, should 



JOHN CALVIN. 



seek to intrude himself at this table, I would certainly 
show myself, as long as I live, such as I ought to be.' 
When the liturgy was concluded, he came down from the 
pulpit and set apart the bread and wine by prayer. 
When the moment arrived to dispense the sacred ele- 
ments, the Libertines made a move forward as if to 
seize the bread and cup. Then, covering the sacred 
symbols with his hands, he exclaimed — ' You may cut 
these hands, and crush these limbs ; my blood is yours — 
shed it! But you shall never force me to give holy 
things to the profane.' The Libertines paused in their 
rush toward the Communion Table. They looked at 
each other — they looked around. An indignant murmur 
circulated through the crowed, and but for the sacred- 
ness of the spot, the murmur would have become an out- 
cry. The voice of the people w r as for Calvin. The Liber- 
tines hesitated for a moment longer, and then fell back. 
They were overawed by the personality of the great re- 
former. The crowd opened a passage for their retreat, 
and the sacrament was adminstered to the believers, who 
were still agitated, but proud of their pastor, and re- 
joicing in his victory." 

Calvin expected to be banished, and openly said so 
in his afternoon sermon of the same day. "It is per- 
haps for 1 the last time, ' ' he said, ' ' that I am speaking 
to the people of Geneva. Firmly resolved to do noth- 
ing that is not according to the will of God, I w r ill never- 
theless stay as long as I can make my voice heard; but 
if I be compelled to hold my peace, I will depart. ' ' He 
had taken for his text the farewell address of Saint Paul 
to the elders of Ephesus. He repeated, in the midst of 
his weeping congregation, the words of the apostle: "I 
commend you to God and to the word of His grace." 
He went home to await the decree of exile ; but it never 



RENEWED CONFLICT WITH THE LIBERTINES. 



61 



came. He soon perceived that on the contrary, his 
position was improved. 

The final conflict was in 1555. The spiritual su- 
premacy had by this time been restored to the consistory. 
The opposition of the Libertines was now directed 
against the large number of refugees who flocked to 
hospitable Geneva from many countries, among whom 
was John Knox, from Scotland. As a century later, 
when the fugitive Huguenots became a blessing to all 
the countries which received them, so, in Calvin's days, 
this was the case with the fugitives arriving at Geneva. 
"If," as a historian says, "the true citizen of a country 
is not he who is born in that country, but the man who, 
whether a citizen by birth or not, understands the con- 
ditions of its national existence and greatness, and there- 
fore labors and combats, perseveres, loves and devotes 
himself — if this is true, then certainly the refugees were 
citizens of Geneva, and Geneva had none better. ' ' Their 
two greatest men and benefactors were foreign born. 
Farel was not a native citizen of Geneva, though the 
true representatives of the city had justly saluted him 
with the name of "father." Calvin was a Frenchman 
by birth and received citizenship in 1559, only five 
years before his death, but no one doubts that he was 
the greatest citizen of Geneva, and its real benefactor. 
The Libertines were against the refugees, because they 
saw in them only the agents of Calvin, and because they 
understood nothing of the Christian heroism which had 
made them relinquish castles, and money, and rank, and 
large estates, for conscience' sake to become the citizens 
of a little republic, and to submit to those stern ordi- 
nances which many native citizens refused. The Liber- 
tines lavished upon the exiles raillery and insult. Those 
who had saved no part of their fortune were reproached 



62 



JOHN CALVIN. 



for eating the bread of hospitality; against those who 
gained their livelihood by labor, the Libertines endeav- 
ored to stir up the workmen and traders of Geneva. 
Those of the refugees who had brought money with 
them, were represented as coming to buy over or to be- 
tray the republic to the King of France. This accusa- 
tion was the more ridiculous, as the French King at that 
very time was bathing himself in the blood of their 
brethren. In April, 1553, Perrin demanded that their 
weapons should be taken away, with the exception of 
their swords, which, however, they were not to wear 
in public. In July, 1554, he demanded that even their 
swords should be taken away. Perrin was called upon to 
produce proofs of his slander against the refugees, 
which he could not furnish. The Libertines now had 
recourse to conspiracy. The infamous "Tavern House 
Plot" was formed, for the massacre of all refugees in 
the city. The following description is given: "On the 
18th of May, in the evening, Berthelier, Perrin, and two 
other heads of the party, met in a tavern with a number 
of other Libertines. After their tongue had performed 
its part, wine provoked their feet and hands to do their 
part. Perrin, however, had not yet made up his mind. 
His companions flattered him, saying that the people 
depended upon him, and that it was he whom they 
expected to see at the head of the movement. He 
yielded, and soon the revolt was in full progress. But 
it did not last long. The conspirators did not find the 
support which they had hoped for. In vain did they 
have it proclaimed that the refugees were going to sack 
the town; the citizens stirred not. There were a few 
murderous encounters but the troops swept down all 
that offered resistance. Several of the Libertines were 
executed. Perrin succeeded in escaping. Many others 



RENEWED CONFLICT WITH THE LIBERTINES. 63 

also tied and the rest were banished. From this period 
on, Geneva had rest. Thus ended the conflict with the 
Libertines. 

In justice to Calvin's enemies, it should be remem- 
bered how unbearably galling it must have been to the 
freer spirits in the republic — many of them belonging 
to old native families and accustomed to hold their heads 
high among the citizens — to find themselves suddenly 
stopped in a career of pleasure, and put under Calvin's 
moral yoke — forbidden the wine shop, the card table, the 
revel, rigorously limited in dress and manner of living, 
compelled to attend services in which their vices were 
unsparingly castigated, and required, on pain of hu- 
miliation, to yield unquestioning obedience to the dic- 
tates of the consistory. They saw, as they thought, a 
new popery established in their midst — they rebelled, 
that they, the children of the soil should be subjected to 
this tyranny by an alien ; they beheld the city filling 
up with refugees, and they clamored that the native in- 
fluence was being weakened; the magistrates were jeal- 
ous of a power which they saw growing up in the state, 
rivalling their own. Yet it must be repeated that Cal- 
vin's discipline proved wholesome for Geneva, and made 
it not only during Calvin 's lifetime, but for more than a 
hundred years after his death a shining light as to 
morality, religion, material prosperity, art and sciences. 
Calvin saved Geneva and the Reformation, for a Geneva 
given up to the Libertines would have been a Geneva 
steeped in vice and a Geneva soon reconquered by hsr 
former Roman masters. 

This last period of conflict with the Libertines, lasting 
nine years, from 1546 to 1551, were the most annoying 
and wearing years of Calvin's life, on account of the in- 
numerable petty insults and attacks to which he was 



64 



JOHN CALVIN. 



exposed. ' ' It were better for me," he wrote in 1555, ''to 
be burned once for all by the papists than to be thus 
incessantly tortured by this people. Only one thing 
supports me in this hard service; it is that death will 
soon come and give me my discharge. " A French bi- 
ographer of Calvin characterizes this period as follows : 
"Choose any one day in the course of these nine years 
and go to Geneva to see Calvin. You come to visit a 
reformer, the man whose name fills Europe, and you will 
certainly find him, but do you know what you will also 
find? A man who is hunted by the most ignoble vexa- 
tions, and whom some annoy at their pleasure by the 
grossest petty insults. Accompany him through the 
streets, and you will hear the hisses of which he has 
spoken to you. The dog which has just run between 
his legs is called back by his master crying out, 'Cal- 
vin ! ' The animal obeys, for that is his name. While 
he is crossing the bridge over the beautiful blue Rhone, 
he is almost thrown down by three worthless fellows 
who pretend not to see him; just as Perrin's wife, when 
riding out of town on horseback yesterday, knocked 
down another pastor who narrowly escaped with his life. 
Walk some evening under his window, and it will be a 
wonder if you do not meet some drunken Libertine 
bawling out some insult, or singing some infamous song. 
Last Thursday in the consistory he had to endure the 
sarcasm of some youth, or man, or woman, or girl, who 
will indeed be punished, but who has sworn to do the 
same thing again. Next Thursday he will hear as bad 
things, — if not worse. And all this is but the mere 
accompaniment of the most serious anxieties at home 
and abroad, — the meditations of a writer, the care of 
immense correspondence, the fatigues of the pastor and 
the preacher, the sufferings and the agony of a sick man. 



RENEWED CONFLICT WITH THE LIBERTINES. 65 

The bare thought of it all brings on a sensation of giddi- 
ness, yet it must be thought of, if we would not be unjust 
towards him, whose irritated nerves caused him more 
than once to write or to do what we should have pre- 
ferred he had neither written nor done." 



CHAPTER XIII. 



CONTROVERSY WITH SERVETUS. 

The reformation age was a period of great doctrinal 
controversies. In Calvin's life we are interested espe- 
cially in his conflict with Michael Servetus, because this 
episode has left a stain of reproach upon his memory, 
and has been very much magnified by Calvin's op- 
ponents, both ancient and modern. To his entire age, 
not only to Calvin, Servetus was a monster and blas- 
phemer of the worst kind. He was a Spanish physi- 
cian, who, in 1531, had published a work against the 
Trinity and other books. He was a man of undoubted 
talent, but his genius was erratic, his mind restless and 
his way of dealing with Divine things daring and irrev- 
erent. In his writings, he denied the Deity of Christ 
and consequently the Trinity. He w r as a pantheist, deny- 
ing the personality of God, asserting that every particle 
of matter was of the divine essence. An example of 
his levity may be found in one passage-at-arms between 
him and Calvin before the Council. "What," said Cal- 
vin, "if one were to strike this pavement with his foot, 
wouldst thou not be horrified at having subjected the 
majesty of God to such treatment!" Servetus replied, 
1 1 1 have no doubt that this bench, this cupboard are the 
substance of God." When it was suggested to him, 
' i Then will the devil actually be God, ' ' he answered with 
a peal of laughter, "And can you doubt it! All things 
are part and parcel of God. ' ' The idea of a triune God 
he compared to the three-headed Cerberus, the monster 
in the underworld of the Greeks. 

Sentiments like these in Calvin's days were, both by 

06 



CONTROVERSY WITH SERVETUS. 



67 



Protestants and Catholics, held to be justly punishable 
by death. All reformers upheld the principle that 
heresy should be suppressed by the civil power. With 
the enlightenment which 350 years have brought us, 
Protestants believe to-day that the fathers were wrong ; 
yet to do justice to Calvin this well-known fact must be 
remembered. Only in two ways did the reformers them- 
selves already modify this old principle, derived from 
the Roman Church. First, mere opinion was not to be 
punished, but only the active diffusion of errors; and, 
second, forbearance was to be shown to minor aberra- 
tions. That Calvin acted on the principle as thus modi- 
fied, and was not in spirit a persecutor, is shown by his 
friendly relations with Socinus, the father of Unitarian- 
ism, and others of free-thinking tendencies, in whom he 
thought he discerned an earnest disposition for the truth. 
On the other hand, unjustly as we, from the twentieth 
century standpoint, may think Servetus to have been 
treated, the well-known fact must not be overlooked that 
he was not a man for whose character it is possible to 
feel much respect. His career was one of long-continued 
dissimulation. In his trial at Vienne, France, he re- 
sorted to false statements in regard to almost every par- 
ticular in his history, so that the Romanists of that 
city would have put him to death, had he not fled from 
prison. At Geneva, the same arts of deception were 
tried. He was, therefore, a man without moral back- 
bone, and cannot command our respect, much as he may 
win our sympathy. 

It must also be kept in mind that Servetus, although 
forewarned by Calvin, insisted on coming to Geneva, 
because he knew of the temporary triumph of the Liber- 
tines in the council, by whose aid he was confident of 
gaining a victory. Calvin's influence was at its lowest 



68 



JOHN CALVIN. 



point, and Servetus indulged in unmeasured invective 
against him. This naturally aroused Calvin to the high- 
est pitch of indignation, and he had him at once arrested 
and tried for heresy. During the trial Calvin had little 
to do with the affair, besides furnishing a list of objec- 
tionable passages from Servetus' writings. The council 
jealously kept the trial in its own hands. Before finally 
deciding, the court sent copies of all the documents to the 
Churches of Berne, Zurich, Basel and Schaffhausen, re- 
questing their advice. All reported that Servetus was 
guilty, and on October 26th, the old law, which Calvin 
neither made nor inspired, was carried ojit, and Servetus 
sentenced to be burned. Calvin — and this is often over- 
looked, — shrank with horror from the infliction of 
death by burning and implored the council to substitute 
a milder form of execution. But there were only seven 
"Calvinists" in the council and that body, presided over 
by Perrin, the Libertine, true to the spirit of the times, 
insisted on having its sentence carried out. On October 
27th, 1553, Servetus was publicly burned, and, by one 
of those numerous falsehoods of history, to Calvin is 
always imputed the guilt of that funeral pile, although 
he and his friends were the only ones who did all in their 
power to prevent it. It is true, in common with Bul- 
linger, Melancthon and others, Calvin, as a child of his 
century, approved of the sentence of death, yet he hated 
to see a Protestant, ' ' Auto da f e, ' 7 a Protestant burning 
of heretics at the stake. The shock aroused many 
Protestants to the consciousness that to kill men for 
opinions' sake, was to go in the teeth of their own claim 
of the right of private judgment. It is clearly 
illogical first to grant a man the right of judg- 
ing of what is true, and then to punish him for 
the use he makes of it. Only one of the reformers, and 



CONTROVERSY WITH SERVETUS. 



69 



he dead at the time, towered high above his contem- 
poraries in this respect also. Luther, not in the least 
questioning the right, doubted the expediencey of exe- 
cuting heretics. He writes to Link, "Thou askest me, 
if the civil magistrate is permitted to slay the false 
prophets. I have little love for condemnations to death, 
even when fully merited. Besides, in this matter, one 
thing alarms me ; it is the example we give. Look at the 
papists ; and, before the time of Christ, look at the Jews. 
The law commanded that false prophets should be slain, 
and they ended by slaying almost none but blameless 
and holy prophets. In nowise, therefore, can I approve 
that false doctors should be put to death. Heresy is a 
spiritual thing, which cannot be hewn with any axe, or 
burned with any fire, or drowned with any water. Over 
the souls of men, God can and will have no one rule, save 
Himself alone. In his book against the Anabaptists, 
Luther says : " It is not right that they should so shock- 
ingly murder, burn and cruelly slay such wretched 
people; they should let every one believe what he will; 
with the Scripture and God's Word, they should check 
and withstand them ; with fire they will accomplish little. 
The executioners, on this plan, would be the most learned 
doctors." But these noble words, as has been said, 
rather express the dictates of Luther ? s humane impulses 
than definite principles by which he would consistently 
abide. 

Chafing under the severe criticism to which Calvin 
has always been subjected on account of his prominence 
in the trial of Servetus, the friends of the reformer at 
Geneva, on October 27, 1903, placed what they call 
an "Expiation Tablet" on the same spot where Servetus 
was burned, on which they declare their high esteem of 
Calvin, and at the same time condemn his error. This is a 



70 



JOHN CALVIN. 



piece of well-meant French emotionalism, which, however, 
has prompted a smile on the part of Calvinists among 
the other nations of the world. For it goes without say- 
ing that we dissent from many things which our fathers 
considered right and proper and even indispensable. 
But if we were to erect tablets and make inscriptions 
declaring our dissent from their mistakes, and if our 
grandchildren were to continue this work, the marble 
quarries of the world would soon be exhausted and this 
globe of ours would look like one great cemetery. It 
is either deficiency in exact historical information, or 
lack of the historical spirit, or constitutional aversion 
to the reformer, to single him out for attack because he 
was not three hundred years ahead of his times with refer- 
ence to this and other matters. Dr. Lindsay correctly 
remarks, 6 6 To say that Calvin burned Servetus, as is con- 
tinually done, is to make one man responsible for a state 
of things which had lasted in "Western Europe ever since 
the Emperor Theodosius declared that all men were out 
of law, who did not accept the Nicene Creed in the form 
issued by Damasus of Eome. On the other hand, to re- 
lease Calvin from his share in that tragedy and crime, 
by denying that he sat among the judges of the heretic, 
or to allege that Servetus was slain because he conspired 
against the liberties of the city is equally unreasonable.' ' 



CHAPTER XIV. 



PASTORAL WORK AT HOME AND ABROAD. 

During the last nine years of his life, after the ex- 
pulsion of the Libertines, Calvin withdrew more and 
more from the political sphere of his theocracy and de- 
voted himself to spiritual labors. This was the period 
of the triumph of his principle. The distrust of him 
by the council cleared away perfectly, and people and 
Senate cordially supported him in his efforts. Many 
tokens exist of the high respect in which Calvin was held 
in his later years. The work he got through during this 
period, considering his weak physical constitution, and 
the numerous maladies which incessantly preyed on him, 
was enormous. He preached two or three times a week, 
lectured every third day, presided in the consistory on 
Thursdays, and fulfilled the other duties of his pastoral 
office. His pen was unceasingly busy, writing new books, 
revising old ones, conducting the extensive correspond- 
ence, a selection of which in his published works fills 
twelve large volumes, taking part in the controversies of 
the time, chief of which were the Sacramentarian Con- 
troversies with the Lutherans. His body was in Geneva 
but his heart was in the church of God everywhere. His 
reputation in Europe was rising to dizzy heights. His 
theological writings, especially his Institutes and the 
famous commentaries on the Old and New Testaments, 
gained for him a renown as an accomplished author, both 
as to matter and style. Among his correspondents were 
kings, nobles, and persons of highest positions in all 
countries; his advice was sought in matters small and 
great. His name was a familiar one in courts and con- 
claves. His letters were prized as literary treasures 

71 



72 



JOHN CALVIN. 



as well as for the worth of their contents. Not a church 
was in difficulty, hardly a martyr went to the stake, but 
received from him some message of guidance or consola- 
tion. Geneva became an asylum for the persecuted like 
no other city, and numbers of persons of rank, learning 
and piety, found refuge within its walls. John Knox 
resided in Geneva at intervals between 1554 and 1559, 
and the chapel standing to the right of Saint Peter's Ca- 
thedral bears the inscription concerning the great Scotch 
reformer. He became intimate with Calvin, and through- 
out life revered him as a father. Large numbers of Re- 
formed preachers, trained by Calvin, went forth to 
spread the gospel in other countries. It is natural that 
Calvin should interest himself in an especial manner 
in the progress of the Reformed Church of France, which 
from a single congregation in 1556, had, notwithstand- 
ing furious persecutions, increased by the year 1561 
to two thousand one hundred and fifty churches. Calvin 
had the satisfaction of seeing the French Reformed 
Church consolidated, and his form of government set 
up in it in even purer form than at Geneva. There is 
scarcely one of his letters in which he does not recur to 
his ideal of the "Church under the Cross' ' growing be- 
fore God in proportion to her sufferings. Noticeable 
among his letters are the two beautiful epistles "To the 
Believers of France," in June and November, 1559. 
"Doubt not," he writes, "even if the wicked had ex- 
hausted all their cruelty, that there shall be one drop of 
blood which shall not tend to increase the number of 
believers." Calvin strongly influenced the First Gen- 
eral Synod of the French Reformed Church, held in 
1559. Some of his most impressive letters were written 
to the great Admiral Coligny, the leader and one of the 
martyrs of the French Reformed people. Like Luther, 



PASTORAL WORK AT HOME AND ABROAD. 73 



Calvin strongly deprecated the religions wars, and with 
respect to the French wars, he told the Reformed lead- 
ers that "if they wished to establish their rights by the 
sword, they would prevent God from helping them. One 
single drop of blood shed by you will overflow all 
France." And this became true. 



CHAPTER XV. 



FOUNDING OF THE GENEVAN UNIVERSITY. 

All the Eeformers were highly educated men, and 
knew the value of sound education for the promotion of 
pure religon and the public welfare. One dream of 
Calvin, therefore, he desired to realize before his death 
— the founding of a university. This work he saw ac- 
complished in 1559. A building was erected; Theodore 
Beza was appointed rector ; and provision was made for 
instruction in Greek, Latin, Hebrew, philosophy, law, and 
later also in medicine, in addition to theology. This in- 
stitution gave new glory to Geneva. In addition to cul- 
ture and pure morals, came now the arts and sciences. 

As early as 1552, the council had bought the ground, 
but the money for building was lacking. Then Calvin 
took the work in hand more directly. He opened a gen- 
eral subscription list and very soon was in possession 
of ten thousand florins, a large sum for those times. 
Then the council decided to begin building. On the 
fifth of June the Academy was opened by a service in 
St. Peter's Cathedral. An eye-witness, the Secretary 
of State, gives the following quaint description of this 
opening service. "On Monday, the fifth of June, 1559, 
my very honorable Lords Syndics with several of the 
Lords Counsellors, and myself, the Secretary, repaired 
to the temple of St. Peter, where the ministers of God's 
Word, learned doctors, scholars, and men of letters were 
assembled in great number. After prayer to God was 
made, the worthy John Calvin delivered a speech in 
French. By the command of the said Lords, the laws, 
order and statutes of the college, with the form of the 

74 



JOHN CALVIN. 



confession of faith to be made by the scholars, together 
with the form of oath which is to be taken by the rector, 
masters and lecturers, were published with a loud voice 
by the Secretary of State. Then was declared the elec- 
tion of the rector, the worthy Theodore Beza, minister of 
the Word of God and burgher of this city. He, after 
this declaration, made an oration in the Latin tongue, 
after which the aforesaid worthy Calvin closed the 
solemnity with prayer. ' ' A school festival is yearly ob- 
served in the same church in commemoration of this 
event. 

It is interesting to read the rules and regulations of 
the institution. The Academy was placed under the 
government of the clergy, who elected the rector, the 
professors and teachers, their choice being approved by 
the council. The rules are stamped with the character 
of those times. The students were to attend divine service 
once every Wednesday, and three times every Sunday. 
In Summer they were to attend class at six; in Winter 
at seven. They w x ere to breakfast in class, and at ten 
o 'clock the teachers were to conduct them to their homes. 
After dinner at eleven o'clock they w^ere to return to 
school and practice psalm singing for an hour; from 
one to two o 'clock they were to take their little afternoon 
refreshment in class. The lessons were to cease at four 
o'clock, and then the scholars were to assemble in the 
hall, where the rector was to dismiss them with kindly 
counsel to all, openly censuring those who had merited 
the reprehension of their teachers. In 1563 already we 
find two hundred and fifty -nine foreign students, whom 
the fame of this school had drawn to Geneva. Not only 
young men but fugitives of riper years and high scho- 
lastic attainments, sat at the feet of Calvin. A contem- 
porary writes that no less than one thousand hearers 



FOUNDING OF THE GENEVAN UNIVERSITY. 77 

listened daily to the lectures of Calvin. This Academy 
became the pattern of all newly-founded similar insti- 
tutions in the neighboring countries. The edifice, with 
few modifications, still houses the University of Geneva. 
The school was poor, the rector receiving only two hun- 
dred and eighty florins and a residence as his annual 
salary. In the years 1580-1590 the school was so poverty- 
stricken that collections had to be made in foreign lands, 
notably in England, to keep it open. Beza was then 
the only j)rofessor, all the others having been discharged 
because of lack of funds. 



CHAPTER XVL 



LAST MONTHS AND DEATH. 

The time now approached when Calvin should lay down 
the weapons of his earthly warfare. His body, the seat of 
many disorders, some of them inflicting on him excruci- 
ating pain, was rapidly breaking up. For years he took 
only one meal a day and that a very sparing one. He 
never wrote much about his bodily weakness, but the 
writings of his friends and the minutes of the council 
furnish us with occasional information. In January, 
1546, the council is informed "of the sickness of M. 
Calvin, who hath no resources," and votes him ten 
crowns. Calvin refused the money. Then the counsel- 
lors decide to buy with the ten crowns a cask of good 
wine and express the desire "that M. Calvin should 
take it in good part." Calvin, not to give offense, ac- 
cepts, but he afterwards employs ten crowns of his salary 
for the relief of the poorest ministers. Towards the 
middle of 1563, he began visibly to fail. He experi- 
enced pains in his head, pains in his limbs, pains in his 
stomach, spitting of blood, difficulty in breathing, the 
gout, and gall stones. The Bishop of London urges 
Calvin to work a little less, and to preserve himself for 
the Church which so greatly needs him. But he con- 
tinued preaching, though it fatigued him very much. 
His last sermon was delivered on the sixth of February, 
1564. A violent fit of coughing stopped his utterance 
and the blood gushed into his mouth. He was obliged to 
come down from the pulpit, and his flock understood 
but too well that he would never enter it again. After 
this, he was carried to the church on several occasions. 

78 



LAST MONTHS AND DEATH. 



7!) 



On the tenth of March the council ordered public pray- 
ers "for the health of M. Calvin, who has been long in- 
disposed, and is even in danger of death. " In spite of 
his pain he continued writing and revising his books. 
On Easter day, April 2nd, he was carried to church and 
partook for the last time of the Sacrament. It was a 
solemn hour when he was seen approaching the Lord's 
Table. Never had his finest sermons had half the elo- 
quence of the spectacle presented by that shattered 
frame and that wasted hand which was stretched out 
to receive the sacred symbols. The large congregation 
was bathed in tears when he joined with trembling voice 
in the concluding hymn, "Lord, let Thy servant depart 
in peace.'* A few days before Easter, on March twenty- 
seventh, he w as borne to the council-chamber and took 
an affectionate farewell from the members; and a month 
later, on April thirtieth, the council sent a deputation 
of tweny-five lords to his house. Calvin solemnly ad- 
dressed them on their duties, begged them one and all to 
pardon his faults and then took a formal and affection- 
ate farewell. On the following day he received the pas- 
tors of the city and made an impressive, fatherly address 
to them, "that they should persevere in doing their duty 
after his death and that they should not lose courage, for 
God would protect the city and the Church." A few 
days before this he had made his last will and testament, 
in the introduction of which he blesses God for having 
called him to the work of the Gospel. He distributes to 
his nephews and nieces his books and furniture, and two 
hundred and twenty-five crowns, ' 1 which is all the prop- 
erty God hath given me. Ten crowns are to be given to 
the college, and ten to the fund for poor strangers and 
refugees.*' 

On May second, Calvin received a letter from Farel, 



80 



JOHN CALVIN. 



who was nearly eighty years old, in which he expressed 
the desire to see him once more. The Eeformer ad- 
vised his fatherly friend not to fatigue himself by com- 
ing to see him. But Farel was already on his way; 
dusty and exhausted, for he had come from Neuchatel 
on foot, Calvin saw him enter his chamber. The leave- 
taking was heart-rending. The scene of the man who 
in 1536 held back Calvin in Geneva embracing the 
dying reformer, was worthy of a painter 's brush. 

The nineteenth of May brought around what were 
called the " censures, " which he had instituted. The 
clergy assembled on that day to admonish each other 
fraternally and afterwards partook together of a modest 
meal. The ministers met in his house and he was carried 
into the dining-room. "My brethren," he said, "I am 
come to see you for the last time." Then he offered 
prayer, but not without difficulty. Before the end of the 
supper he requested to be carried back to his bed cham- 
ber. The few days that remained to him were spent 
almost wholly in prayer. His form was so wasted that 
it seemed as if only the spirit were left, but his eyes, 
witnesses tell us, burned with their old lustre till the 
close. On May twenty-seventh, towards eight o'clock 
in the evening he died, and as one of his friends wrote 
"at the same moment when the sun set, the greatest 
light on earth in the church of God was withdrawn to 
heaven." Great was the mourning in Geneva, and in- 
tense the excitement which the news of his death thrilled 
through the Christian world. 

The day following his death, at two o'clock, an im- 
mense procession of professors, ministers, students, citi- 
zens, all classes of population, many of them in tears, 
followed his corpse to its quiet resting-place in the ceme- 
tery of Plain Palais. It was Calvin's own wish that he 



82 



JOHN CALVIN. 



should be buried without pomp and that no stone should 
be raised to his memory. 

The only official epitaph which he received is this half- 
line inscribed by the side of his name in the record of the 
consistory — "Went to God, Saturday, the twenty-sev- 
enth." The exact spot where he sleeps is accordingly 
unknown. A small stone marked with the simple letters 
"J. C." has for about thirty years marked the sup- 
posed place of his interment, but the identification is 
conjectural. 

Extensive preparations are being made at present to 
erect an immense "Calvin Monument" at Geneva, on 
the occasion of the Four Hundredth birthday of the re- 
former, which is designed to outshine the largest of the 
many Luther monuments, that at Worms, in point of 
size, cost, and artistic beauty. 



CHAPTER XVII. 



PERSONAL CHARACTER OF CALVIN. 

The oft-quoted words of the great German poet, Schil- 
ler, with reference to Wallenstein, may fitly be applied 
to Calvin: "Distorted by the praise and hate of parties, 
the impress of his character floats in history." ("Von 
der Parteien Gunst und Hass verwirrt, schwebt sein 
Charakterbild in der Geschichte.") Exalted to the high- 
heaven by his admirers, during his life and up to the 
present time, his reputation and character have been 
attacked in an unusually virulent manner by every 
artifice of ingenuity, sophistry and malignity, by Roman- 
ists, Free-thinkers and Lutherans. "No name in church 
history," says Dr. Schaff, "not even Hildebrand's, or 
Luther's or Loyola's — has been so much loved and hated, 
admired and abhorred, praised and blamed, blessed and 
cursed, as that of John Calvin." The unusual experi- 
ence in this connection, however, is that even adherents 
of Reformed and Presbyterian Churches have not infre- 
quently succumbed to the temptation of unduly mini- 
mizing the lofty qualities and exaggerating the faults of 
the reformer of their own church. A similar unsympa- 
thetic attitude towards the leaders of one's own denomi- 
nation is not found in other churches. A single event, 
the execution of Servetus, distorted and imputed to his 
agency alone, has been made to color his whole life and 
to portray his habitual conduct. To write about Calvin, 
therefore, means to defend him. If the traditional por- 
trait of Calvin represented the real Calvin it would re- 
main an unsolved mystery how such a man could ever 
have awakened such a deep feeling of respect and love in 

83 



84 



JOHN CALVIN. 



the hearts of his friends, how he could have been almost 
idolized in all sections of Europe, how martyrs on the 
funeral pile could adoringly cry out, "Thee, Calvin, 
we greet, for thou hast given us the truth how he could 
have left such an impression of the "great majesty" of 
his character as he did, on the council of his own city. 
Between the hero-worship .accorded to the unquestioned 
and overtowering genius of Luther, and the unsympa- 
thetic criticism directed at Calvin, there is the golden 
mean of a serious and sympathetic study of the re- 
former's life and the great cause which he represented 
and promoted. And there are distinct indications in 
this age, when the historical spirit and scientific methods 
dominate almost every sphere of investigation, that the 
cry, "back to the sources/' to Calvin's Commentaries, his 
Institutes, and especially to the more than a dozen vol- 
umes of his letters, (which are after all the truest portrait 
of the man's character,) is being heard and heeded by 
writers on Calvin. The traditional views of the reformer 
and his work which have become stereotyped and which 
writers uncritically copied one from the other are being 
carefully scrutinized. The present year of the 400th 
anniversary of his birth will no doubt aid in these laud- 
able efforts, especially by making his own writings more 
accessible to the students in our seminaries and other in- 
stitutions of higher education. We believe that a well- 
balanced portrait of Calvin's character, in which light 
and shade are distributed in proportions true to the facts 
of history, will show him to have been a man of strong 
faith, deep humility, unbending conviction, and genuine 
heart-power ; tolerant, courageous, highly intellectual, in- 
dustrious and very courteous in his outward manners. 
Let us analyze these characteristics in detail. 



PERSONAL CHARACTER OF CALVIN. 



85 



1. A man of strong faith. As Calvin never wavered 
in doctrine, so neither can any trace of weakness be 
found in his faith. Luther had to endure terrible con- 
flicts; Melancthon was often despondent; even Knox, 
with all his energy, felt disheartened from time to time. 
But Calvin's trust was as firm as a rock, and this firm- 
ness was one of the most striking features of his char- 
acter. It is not to be supposed, however, that he knew 
nothing of such struggles. In a classic passage in his 
"Institutes," he says: "If the believing soul is driven 
to and fro in an unusual manner, still will it rise again 
superior to all its distresses, and never suffer itself to be 
deprived of its trust in the divine mercy. Faith is never 
wholly rooted out of the heart of a true believer. In 
all struggles faith overcometh the world, though it should 
be assailed a thousand times. " The secret of the strength 
of Calvin's faith will be found in his firm conviction in 
God's immutable decrees, that God foreordained whatso- 
ever comes to pass. His consciousness of God's presence 
was always strong and sometimes very vivid. "Before 
God and His holy angels" is a favorite phrase which he 
often uses. The perilous times in which he lived doubt- 
less contributed greatly to this remarkable energy of 
faith. The very excitement and the surrounding dangers 
would aid in its development. 

2. A man of deep humility. With reference to this 
trait of character, Calvin's letters, admitting us to the 
inmost recesses of his soul, reveal to us a very different 
man from the Calvin of traditional opinion. Accused of 
pride and arrogance, we find a man of very humble 
heart, shy, timid, even bashful. Accused of tyranny, he 
was able to write : ' i How groundless the slander is that 
I am a tyrannical ruler, I leave my colleagues to judge, 
for they certainly have never complained that they felt 



86 



JOHN CALVIN. 



themselves opprest by my power ; on the contrary, they 
frequently object to me that I am too shy, and do not 
act freely enough when there is need of the exercise of 
my authority, which all regard as beneficial. " It is well 
known that his great desire was to spend his time in re- 
tirement. The records show that in 1541 it took the city 
of Geneva and the friends of the Reformed cause in other 
places almost a year to force him out of his retirement 
at Strasburg and induce him to return to Geneva. Of 
the naive self-consciousness of Luther, Calvin had not the 
least vestige. Luther, for instance, signed his last will 
and testament as follows : "It is I, Dr. Martinus Luther, 
administrator of God and witness of His Gospel on earth, 
who needs no attorney to confirm his will ; for I am well 
known in heaven, on earth, and in hell. And I am re- 
spected enough that one may believe me. ' ' Calvin would 
never have dreamed of speaking thus concerning his per- 
son. In his outward circumstances also, he was humble 
and remained poor. This characteristic even the pope 
noticed, when, on hearing of Calvin's death, he is said 
to have remarked: "That which made the strength of 
that heretic was, that money was nothing to him." 
When Cardinal Sadolet made his secret visit to Geneva, 
he asked for "Calvin's palace," and was astonished to 
find a very modest house. 

3. A man of unbending loyalty to convictions and con- 
science. Calvin's power of conscience surpasses all the 
other powers of his nature. It was this, and not unholy 
passion, which so often allowed his zeal to go too far 
in the pursuit of a particular end. Thus, his failings 
sprung from the excess of his virtues. It was this force 
of conscience which often carried him too far in the three 
distinguishing tendencies of his spirit : in his theological! 
opinions, in his exercise of church discipline, an<J m to§ 



PERSONAL CHARACTER OF CALVIN. 



87 



desire of unity. His conscience impelled him to attend 
to the least as well as to the greatest things. In this he 
was like all men of lofty capacity. He was a Frenchman 
in liveliness but a German in his accuracy and con- 
scientious observance of truth. Even in the development 
of his Doctrine of Election it was loyalty to conscience 
which led him to definitions that even to him seemed 
"horrible. ' ' In his theological controversies, he did noth- 
ing moved by mere calculations of prudence ; these were 
also a matter of conscience with him. Dr. Henry says : 
"Calvin was pre-eminently a slave to conscience. 
Neither the understanding nor the feelings predominated 
in him. This conscientiousness exercised the greatest in- 
fluence over his whole being, which, endowed with glow- 
ing zeal, showed a holy devotedness to whatever is good 
and right. Hence the character of his religious zeal, 
which sometimes seems blended with obstinacy, fanati- 
cism and arrogance, exhibits at the same time a noble, 
unconquerable firmness; a sincere, deep humility; an 
utter self-abasement, the fruit of an awakening con- 
science. Thus, as the Holy Spirit influenced in him, not 
so much the feelings, the imagination, or the understand- 
ing, as the conscience, so the purest love of truth exer- 
cised the most remarkable influence on his life. His hero- 
ism displayed itself in his various struggles with the 
Libertines; his piety was always accompanied by the 
"profound belief in the divine election ; in his inner life, 
his faith never wavered; his feeling of the nearness of 
God never failed. ' 7 Calvin, although known as a French- 
man of aristocratic courtesy of outward manner, was an 
enemy of hypocrisy and deceit, he being the soul of sin- 
cerity. In one of his letters he writes : " I received you 
in a manner but little friendly, for I could not practice 
hypocrisy, which exists not in my soul. Not only did 



88 



JOHN CALVIN. 



the reasons alluded to make me resolute, but still more the 
horror which I feel at your insincerity ' 

4. A man of genuine heart-power. The world has 
been accustomed to impute a stoic coldness and severity 
to his character, but the whole tenor of his life contra- 
dicts this imputation. Calvin was not cold. Those who 
speak of him in this way have not gone far down into 
his inner life. Here, again, it is his letters which show 
that beneath a reserved exterior there beats a warm, true, 
loving heart. On the death of his infant son, he writes : 
"The Lord has indeed inflicted a grievous wound on us 
by the death of our little son, and we feel it bitterly. 
But He is a father, and knows what is necessary for His 
children." When his wife was removed from his side, 
he tells : ' 6 If I had not exercised the whole force of my 
spirit to soften my agony, I could not have borne it. I 
do what I can not to sink under the weight of the mis- 
fortune." His spirit went on mellowing as years ad- 
vanced. A volume could be filled with extracts from his 
letters, showing the same throbbing heart as those just 
quoted. Calvin was not only craving for true friend- 
ship, since his student days, but he also knew how to 
retain the love and respect of his friends. 

Strange as it may seem to those who still cling to the 
traditional view of a "heartless" Calvin, the circle of his 
devoted friends at Geneva and throughout Europe in- 
creased to enormous proportions as the years rolled by. 
To this also his extensive correspondence bears unim- 
peachable evidence. While around the ageing Luther it 
became decidedly lonesome on account of his increasing 
intolerance which even made Melancthon confess to a 
feeling of uneasiness in the presence of his revered 
friend, the number of Calvin's friends and their devo- 
tion was steadily on the increase. The fact that there 



PERSONAL CHARACTER OF CALVIN. 



89 



are so few Calvin monuments in existence must not be 
misconstrued, as Dr. Schaff does, as an evidence of lack 
of enthusiasm. It has always been a conscientious con- 
viction with the most loyal friends of Calvin that know- 
ing the reformer's aversion to monuments and similar 
display, his last will should be respected, and many ob- 
jected therefore to the monument at present under con- 
struction at Geneva. He is, however, immortalized in the 
Dom at Berlin, in the Protestation Church at Speyer 
on the great Luther monument at "Worms, and in other 
places. His most enduring monument, however, is his 
work and influence. 

Calvin is constantly blamed for want of love of nature. 
Nature's fairest scenes were stretched around him, yet 
his letters take no more notice of them than if he had lived 
in the desert. That his intellectual powers were pre- 
eminent is unquestionably true. Yet the argument from 
silence must not be pressed too far. Moreover, passages 
might be quoted to show that Calvin was far from in- 
sensible to the grandeur of God's works in the natural 
world. In his preface to the New Testament, he writes : 
"Whither could men turn without hearing vocal testi- 
monies to the existence and glory of God. The birds 
in their warblings sing of God, and the lowing steers 
more loudly tell of him, while the heavenly bodies move 
on in silent adoration ; the mountains resound His praise, 
and fountain and flood point to Him with their glanze, 
and every herb and flower seem to woo man to his 
Maker." Because Calvin has said nothing of the natural 
beauties of his surroundings, the lake, the Mount Blanc, 
and the beautiful castles, let us not hastily conclude 
that he saw nothing. In a letter to a friend for whom 
he rented a house, he describes the one which he has 
chosen, saying: "You will have a garden in front; and 



( J0 



JOHN CALVIN. 



behind another garden." In a letter to Viret in » 1550. 
he outlines a plan of "rusticating" with him on the 
smiling hills near Geneva, when the friend should pay 
his promised visit. It should be known by this time that 
Calvin had a genuine appreciation of both poetry and 
music. He promoted a metrical version of the Psalms, 
had appropriate tunes composed to them and himself 
wrote a few pieces, including a "Hymn of Praise to 
Christ," which, says Schaff, "are worthy of Clement 
Marot, and reveal an unexpected vein of poetic fervor 
and tenderness. ' ' 

5. Calvin was a tolerant man. Judged from the stand- 
point of his age, he was liberal in his views, moderate in 
his spirit, and tolerant in his disposition. This goes 
against the traditional opinion concerning the reformer. 
But tried by the universal judgment of his age, Calvin was 
not as intolerant as Luther and not more intolerant than 
Zwingli. Calvin's mind, whatever its defects, was most 
assuredly not a narrow one. "While not free from the in- 
evitable limitations of his age, it was vast, capacious, 
comprehensive. It was certainly not narrow as despis- 
ing culture. With respect to heathen wisdom, he says: 
"It is granted by all that truth, of what kind soever it 
is, is precious. And as God is the fountain of all that 
is good, you will incur the charge of deep ingratitude, if 
you do not welcome every portion of truth, in whatever 
channel it may come to you. ' ' Calvin was not narrow in 
his expositions of the Bible, which anticipate the best 
modern works of their class in their freedom from dog- 
matic prejudice, and honest desire to discover the exact 
sense of Scripture. In the exercise of genuine tolera- 
tion, the reformer embraced men of very different 
opinions, like Socinus, the Unitarian, and Luther. He 
was liberal enough not to insist on non-essentials which 



PERSONAL CHARACTER OF CALVIN. 



91 



might prove a barrier to the union of churches. Him- 
self favoring the Presbyter ial form of church polity, he 
was not as hostile to Episcopacy as many men in our own 
days. He withheld the sacrament from the Libertines 
because of their immorality, but he fought against the 
narrowness of the Anabaptists, who insisted on a per- 
fectly pure church upon earth. In insisting that the 
spreading of heresy should be punished he did what Beza 
and Melancthon, two of the mildest characters in the 
reformation period, also strenuously advocated. His 
laws punished blasphemy, and so do ours at the present 
time, even in free America. At any rate, it seems high 
time to give up the unhistorical conception which makes 
these men monsters of intolerance. Their heart revolted 
against many things which their highly developed sense 
of duty and responsibility compelled them to do. They 
were simply slaves to a conscience, which in too many 
respects was more tender than ours, while in other di- 
rections it lacked clearness of spiritual vision. They 
were afraid to do wrong; they felt like many conscien- 
tious pastors to-day, who experience a constant conflict 
between conscience and the Zeitgeist in the church — 
the spirit of the times. The great responsibility of the 
ministry was a reality in the eyes of these reformers. 

6. A man of courage. There was a certain fiery ex- 
cess, a daringness in Calvin's nature, which mingled 
itself with his southern blood. He had the zeal of a 
prophet of the Old Covenant. Bayle says, "he was 
frighted at nothing. Exquisitely sensitive and timid 
by constitution, he was from his earliest years obliged 
to bend to the inflexible rule of duty." Dr. Henry 
says, 1 6 Calvin 's love of truth, his noble, unselfish struggle 
for the things of God, amid difficulty and danger so 
strengthened his soul that it became the abode of a 



92 



JOHN CALVIX. 



courage unfailing and heroic. "With a good conscience, 
therefore, he could, in numerous letters exhort the mar- 
tyrs of the Eeformed faith to remain true unto death. 
That Calvin was also possessed of physical courage was 
shown on that Easter day when he withheld the Sacra- 
ment from the Libertines at the danger of his life." 
On his moral courage we need not enlarge; his whole 
life is a commentary on that. 

7. An intellectual giant. Calvin's logical and well- 
trained mind worked with such accuracy that his 
opinions underwent no material change with passing 
years, and the revised and enlarged editions of his great 
work, preserved to the last the identity of his earlier 
teachings. In his own time he was already famous for 
his retentive memory. When he had once seen a person, 
he recognized him immediately years afterwards, and 
if interrupted while dictating, he could resume his task, 
after an interval of hours, at the point where he left it, 
without aid from his secretary; hence, he was able 
to discourse, even upon the prophets, where numerous 
historical references were involved without the aid of a 
scrap of paper, and with nothing before him but the 
text. He had a mind calm, lofty and comprehensive in 
its views of truth; clear and logical in its processes of 
thought; endowed with singular penetration into men's 
characters; and statesmanlike in its grasp of the com- 
plex features of an involved situation. His method and 
presentation of the truth was keen and severely logical. 
Sophistical objections could not stand before his pene- 
trating intellect. He mastered several languages and 
his Latin style was so polished and classical that it has 
been compared with that of Cicero. 

<5. An industrious man. Like all men who have at- 
tained unto greatness, Calvin was a hard and indus- 



PERSONAL CHARACTER OF CALVIN, 



93 



trious worker. His achievements were marvellous. He 
was pastor, professor and statesman. The Genevan edi- 
tion of his works consists of twelve folio volumes. Be- 
sides these, there exist at Geneva two thousand of his 
sermons and lectures, taken down from his mouth as 
he delivered them. All this work he accomplished dur- 
ing the twenty-eight years which he spent in the min- 
istry. At one time he writes : " I have not time enough 
to look out of my house at the blessed sun, and if things 
continue thus I shall forget what sort of an appearance 
it has. "When I have settled my usual business, I have 
so many letters to w r rite, so many questions to answer, 
that many a night is spent without sleep." He was, 
however, cheerful and could say, "I compare myself to 
a warrior who has slain many enemies, when I have got- 
ten over many heavy labors. I cannot refuse a man my 
aid, whatever time and trouble it might cost me." On 
the same subject, I find in a letter to Far el, dated Stras- 
burg, April 20, 1539, the following sentence, "I do not 
remember, throughout this whole year, a single day 
w^hich was more completely engaged with various oc- 
cupations. For when the present messenger wished to 
carry along with him the beginning of my book, there 
were about twenty leaves which it required me to revise. 
In addition, there was the public lecture and I had 
also to preach; four letters were still to be written; 
some disputes to settle, and to reply to more than ten 
interruptions in the meantime, you will therefore ex- 
cuse if my letter should be both brief and inaccurate." 

9. A courteous gentleman. The manners of Calvin 
were those of the well-bred gentleman, grave and 
courtly, rather than those of the man of the people. 
Beza says, "earnest and dignified as he was, there has 
rarely been a man whose discourse and friendly bear- 



94 



JOHN CALVIN. 



ing were more; agreeable than Calvin's. He bore with 
wonderful patience the failings of men, arising from 
their natural infirmities, that he might not by intem- 
perate severity, grieve or offend the conscience of the 
weak." In his correspondence as well as in his per- 
sonal intercourse he united firmness with respect for 
propriety. He knew what is due to the great and he 
knew also how to stop just at the point where flattery 
would begin. In his controversial writings, he is less 
abusive than Luther, and yet occasionally he also lost 
his temper and indulged in unbecoming raillery. Some 
coarse sayings of his have been preserved and are oc- 
casionally exhibited by his enemies. "Without wishing 
to excuse epithets, it must be remembered when criti- 
cising the reformers that our Lord Himself calls the 
Pharisees " hypocrites, and wolves in sheep's clothing" 
and His king a fox, on account of Herod's crafty char- 
acter. 

But Calvin was by no means without faults. Fisher 
says of him, 6 i instead of a geniality, which is one of the 
native qualities of Luther, -we find an acerbity, which is 
felt more easily than described, and which more than 
anything else has inspired multitudes with aversion to 
him. In his boyhood already he was the censor of the 
faults of his schoolmates, so that he received the nick- 
name 6 Accusative.' Through life, he had a tone, 
in reminding men of their real or supposed delinquencies 
which provoked resentment. To those much older than 
himself, to men like Cranmer and Melancthon, he wrote 
in this unconsciously cutting style. "We learn from Cal- 
vin himself that Melancthon, mild as he was naturally, 
was so offended at the style of one of his admonitory 
epistles, that he tore it to pieces. The wretched health, 
with the enormous burdens of labors had an unfavorable 



PERSONAL CHARACTER OF CALVIN. 



95 



effect upon a temper naturally irritable. He was occa- 
sionally so carried away by gusts of passion that he lost 
all self-control. He acknowledges this fault with the 
utmost frankness ; he had tried in vain, he says, to tame 
"the wild beast of his anger;" and on his death-bed he 
asked pardon of the Senate of Geneva for outbursts of 
passion while at the same time he thanked them for 
their forbearance. No doubt his coleric temperament 
had a large share in leading him astray. To Bucer, he 
writes "of all the struggles which I have had against 
my failings, the greatest has been that against my im- 
patience." But when people speak of Calvin's malice, 
they utter a falsehood and contradict all that we know 
of his life. Little matters sometimes excited him to 
anger. For example, many people, in order to obtain a 
specimen of his handwriting would question him on sub- 
jects which he had already fully explained in his printed 
works. This sometimes moved him to keen sarcasm and 
even vehemence. In his whole correspondence, once only 
does he speak of laughing, and then it is the more meri- 
torious, because he has just been obliged to hand the pen 
to his secretary, the rheumatism having "taken him so 
rudely by the shoulders that he could no longer make a 
stroke with his pen." The letter was addressed to a 
father, who, in a mirthful letter had announced to 
Calvin the birth of a son. Calvin would not be outdone 
in his answer. His mirth, however, is but a flash; 
and in an instant all is grave again : " I pray our Lord 
that it may please Him to have you and the child in His 
holy keeping," is the solemn conclusion. 

Summing up our discussion on the reformer's char- 
acter, it has, we think, become clear that Calvin's fatal 
want was a lack of geniality in his nature. If he had had 
only a small percentage of that quality, which was so ex- 



96 



JOHN CALVIN. 



uberant in Luther, the traditional view of him would be 
different. It is Luther's attractive personality and his 
kindly disposition which save the day for the German 
reformer, and which, although the most intolerant among 
the reformers, make him so attractive to people of 
all nationalities. In order to be fair to Calvin and to 
assign him his right place in history, the important ques- 
tion for the sound psychologist and the philosopher of 
history is, however, this : without the severity of Calvin, 
would we have had a Geneva, the model city for centuries, 
a true Calvinism, a Presbyterian Scotland, a Reformed 
Palatinate, a New England Puritanism ? Would we not 
have witnessed a deluge of moral laxity, of perverted 
ideas concerning liberty, a successful tyranny by princes, 
if Calvin had not been Calvin, if he and his followers 
had not, at the peril of their lives, insisted on a realiza- 
tion in actual life of those moral principles which, as 
far as doctrine goes, he had in common with Luther, but 
which the German reformer was so reluctant to enforce 
with the same sternness with which he insisted on 
" purity of doctrine"? This again raises the larger 
questions: can radical reforms be successful in uproot- 
ing wrong habits of life in state and society without 
Elijahs, without Johns the Baptist, without Calvins, 
without Knoxes ? Was Bismarck entirely wrong or does 
history bear him out when he said that, taking the world 
as it really is, great wrongs cannot be righted by reso- 
lutions and discussions, but only by blood and iron? 
Is it possible to blast the rocks of iniquity without moral 
powder and spiritual dynamite ? How much would Me- 
lancthon have accomplished with his "Apology," his 
"Interims," and all sorts of compromises? Except for 
the voice of thunder from lions like Luther, Calvin and 
Knox the clash of arms by Pope and Emperor would 



PERSONAL CHARACTER OF CALVIN. 



97 



have drowned the gentle voice of compromise. Is it 
sound philosophy of history, then, to rule out those men 
as disturbing factors and unlovely people? The world 
in and outside of the church has no objection to the 
"pure gospel" if it confines itself to catechisms and 
sermons, nor to a new ritual, but w T hen the Apostle to 
the Gentiles insists on church discipline at Corinth, and 
the man of iron at Geneva emphasizes pure morals, the 
Libertines defame their memory. Is it not rather true 
what Morus says of Calvin: "His holy zeal w r as a 
righteous one, and it is our drowsiness only which has 
provoked his Christian indignation, his tumultuous and 
stormy feeling of duty. And what remains for the 
Christian if he will not use the sword? It is not by 
soft remedies that he could heal the wounds of Zion. 
He would not have gained his end, and it would have 
been objected to him, 'if you are not yourself convinced 
in your whole soul, why do you disturb the existing 
order of things?' " Once more we ask, has Dr. Mc- 
Fetridge read the history of the Reformation aright 
when he writes : ' ' When in the great toil and roar of the 
conflict the fiery nature of Luther began to chill, and 
he began to temporize with civil rulers, and to settle 
down in harmony with them, it was the uncompromising 
theology of the Genevan school which heroically and tri- 
umphantly waged the conflict to the end. I but repeat 
the testimony of history, friendly and unfriendly to Cal- 
vinism, when I say that had it not been for the strong, 
unflinching systematic spirit and character of the the- 
ology of Calvin, the Reformation would have been lost 
to the world. Hence it was that almost everywhere the 
Reformation assumed a Calvinistic type, supplanting 
or absorbing all other reforming ideas. Even in the 
lands such as Germany and Switzerland, where the pe- 



98 



JOHN CALVIN. 



culiarly Lutheran ideas at first found acceptance, it was, 
as Hagenbach says, 'through the influence of Calvinistic 
principles' that the Protestantism of those lands as- 
sumed an external form and organization, and attained 
to definite dimensions in the history of the world. ' ' "We 
are not ready to subscribe to every word of Froude, but 
his opinion in general is certainly correct when he 
writes: ' 'The Lutheran congregations were but half 
emancipated from superstition, and shrank from press- 
ing the struggle to extremities ; and half measures meant 
half -heart edness, convictions which were but half con- 
victions, and truth with an alloy of falsehood. Half 
measures, however, would not quench the fires of Philip 
of Spain or raise men in France or Scotland who would 
meet crest to crest the princes of the house of Loraine. 
The reformers required a position more sharply defined 
and a sterner leader, and that leader they found in 
John Calvin. For hard times hard men are needed, and 
intellects which can pierce to the roots where truth 
and lies part company. It fares ill with the soldiers of 
religion when 'the accursed thing is in the -camp.' And 
this is to be said of Calvin, that, so far as the state 
of knowledge permitted, no eye could have detected more 
keenly the unsound spots in the creed of the church, 
nor was there a reformer in Europe so resolute to ex- 
ercise, tear out and destroy what was distinctly seen 
to be false — so resolute to establish what was true in 
its place, and make truth, to the last fibre of it, the rule 
of practical life. " 

Instead, therefore, of unduly exalting one and be- 
littling the other of the reformers, the Protestant world 
should rejoice that, to speak in the words of Goethe, re- 
ferring to himself and Schiller, "she has two such admir- 
able fellows," as Luther and Calvin. The injection of a 



PERSONAL CHARACTER OF CALVIN. 



99 



strong dose of the "historical spirit" into our Calvin 
studies, the employment of modern methods, recourse 
to the sources and a sympathetic spirit will no doubt 
bring us nearer to the real Calvin. 



C H A P T EH XVIII. 



TRIBUTES TO THE MEMORY OF CALVIN. 

In addition to the appreciation of Calvin's character 
in the previous chapter, we wish to quote a few of the 
thousands of testimonies, mostly from men who were 
not partisans of the reformer or his cause. We begin 
with his friend and successor : 

Beza: "He lived fifty-four years, ten months and 
seventeen days, half of which time he passed in the 
sacred ministry. His stature Avas of a middle size, his 
complexion dark and pallid, his eyes brilliant even till 
death, expressing the acuteness of his understanding. 
He lived nearly without sleep. His power of memory 
was almost incredible, and his judgment so sound that 
his decisions often seemed almost oracular. In his words 
he was sparing, and he despised an artificial eloquence; 
yet was he an accomplished writer, and by the accuracy 
of his mind and his practice of dictating to an amanu- 
ensis he attained to speak little different from what he 
would have written. The consistency and uniformity 
of his doctrine, from first to last, are scarcely to be 
paralleled. Nature had formed him grave, yet in the 
intercourse of social life no one showed more suavity. 
He exercised great forbearance toward all such infirmi- 
ties in others as are consistent with integrity, not over- 
awing his weaker brethren, but toward flattery and every 
species of insincerity, especially where religion was con- 
cerned, he was severe and indignant. He was naturally 
irritable and this fault was increased by the excessive 
laboriousness of his life; yet the Spirit of God had 
taught him to govern both his temper and his tongue, 

100 



TRIBUTES TO THE MEMORY OF CALVIN. 101 

That so many and so great virtues, both in public and 
in private life, should have called forth against him 
many enemies no one will wonder who duly considers 
what has ever befallen eminent men, both in sacred and 
in profane history. Those enemies brand him as a 
heretic, but Christ suffered under the same reproach. 
He was expelled, say they, from Geneva. True, he was ; 
but he was solicited to return. He is charged with am- 
bition — yea, with aspiring at a new popedom — an extra- 
ordinary charge to be brought against a man who chose 
his kind of life, and in this state, in this church, which I 
might truly call the very seat of poverty. They say 
again that he coveted wealth. Yet all his worldly goods, 
including his library, which brought a high price, 
scarcely amounted to three hundred crowns. Well might 
he say in his preface to the book of Psalms, ' That I am 
not a lover of money, if I fail of persuading men while 
I live, my death will demonstrate.' How small his 
stipend was the senate knows ; yet they can bear witness 
that, so far from being dissatisfied with it, he per- 
tinaciously refused an increase when it was offered him. 
He delighted, forsooth, in luxury and indulgence! Let 
his labors answer the charge. What accusations will not 
some men bring against him ? But no refutation of them 
is wanting to those persons who knew him while he lived, 
and they will want none among posterity with men of 
judgment who shall collect his character from his 
writings. Having given with good faith the history of 
his life and of his death, after sixteen years' observation 
of him I feel myself warranted to declare that in him 
was proposed to all men an illustrious example of the 
life and death of a Christian; so that it will be found 
as difficult to emulate as it is easy to calumniate him." 



102 



JOHN CALVIN. 



Prof. Theodore Appel, in the " Tercentenary Monu- 
ment": "Calvin also belonged to the heroic period 

and as the brightest luminary in the spiritual firmament 
shed a brilliant light over Europe." 

Dr. H. A. Meier, in his " Kirchensgeshichte " : "Al- 
though there is in Calvin's character a certain degree of 
severity and acerbity, yet in his family and in his social 
intercourse he shows deep feeling, a conciliatory spirit 
and real sympathy." 

Dr. Selden: "Calvin had his faults and limitations, 
some traceable to the temper and the notions of the 
times in which he lived, some to his disordered physical 
condition and overtaxed nervous system, and some to the 
human frailty for which we all need broad charity. ' ' 

Dr. Newman: "Aristocratic by nature and training, 
fitted to be a leader of men, not by his powers of work- 
ing upon the emotions, but rather by his ability to ap- 
peal to the moral and the intellectual faculties; self- 
sacrificing in the highest degree, yet believing firmly 
that his cause was identical with the cause of God, and 
therefore absolutely uncompromising and almost despot- 
ical in carrying out what he supposed loyalty to his 
trust required, he could not have failed of eminence in 
any community that should tolerate his activity. He 
combined moral earnestness, learning, analytical power 
and practical organizing and administrative ability in 
a degree unapproached by any other Protestant leader. ' ' 

Trechsel: "People have often supposed that they 
were insulting Calvin's memory by calling him the pope 
of Protestantism. He was so, but in the noblest sense 
of the word through the moral and spiritual superiority 
with which the Lord of the Church had endowed him. 
His was a papacy of truth and honor. ' ' 



TRIBUTES TO THE MEMORY OF CALVIN. 103 

Baur, the founder of the Tuebingen School of N. T. 
criticism : 6 ' Calvin was a man of rare learning, of many- 
sided culture, of a penetrating intellect, of a strong but 
severe character, the equal of the other reformers and 
in point of intellectuality even excelling them." 

Dr. Van Home, President of the Central Theological 
Seminary of the Eeformed Church, Dayton, Ohio: "The 
firmness of Calvin in maintaining the doctrine of the 
Divine Sovereignty, even in the process of the sinner's 
salvation, and in emphasizing the attribute of justice in 
the Godhead, on the lines laid down by St. Paul in Scrip- 
ture, has committed the Eeformed Church to this view 
in Church History. The human will, always restive 
under restraint, is impatient of such teachings, and 
writers frequently use the word ' Calvinism' as a term 
of reproach, associating with it the exaggerated view 
that it is a doctrine of antagonism to God's goodness, 
and has in it a principle of fatalism." (Church and 
Future Life, page 1.) But Calvin, in his Institutes, 
III, 23, 8, says: "The perdition of the wicked depends 
upon the divine predestination in such a manner that the 
cause and matter of it are found in themselves. Man 
falls according to the appointment of Divine providence, 
but he falls by his own fault, 'suo vitio cadit. ' (Religion 
and Eevelation, page 133.) Calvin here commits him- 
self to the view known as ' pretention, ' that is, that 
God passes by those who will not accept Him, and does 
not bestow His grace upon them; thus he is shielded 
from the charge of being, in any sense, a fatalist/' 

Voltaire: 6 'The famous Calvin, whom we regard as 
the Apostle of Geneva raised himself up to the rank 
of Pope of the Protestants. The severity of Calvin 
was united with the greatest disinterestedness. 9 9 



104 



JOHN CALVIN. 



Ancillon: " Calvin was not only a profound theo* 
logian, but likewise was an able legislator; the share 
which he had in the framing of the civil and religions 
laws which have produced for several centuries the 
happiness of the Genevan republic, is perhaps a fairer 
title to renown than his theological works; and this 
republic, celebrated notwithstanding its small size, and 
which knew how to unite morals with intellect, riches 
with simplicity, simplicity with taste, liberty with order, 
and which has been a focus of talents and virtues, has 
proved that Calvin knew men, and knew how to govern 
them." 

Guizot, celebrated French historian and statesman: 
c c Calvin is great by reason of his marvellous powers, his 
lasting labors, and the moral height and purity of his 
character. Earnest in faith, pure in motive, austere in 
his life, and mighty in his works, Calvin is one of those 
who deserve their great fame. Three centuries sepa- 
rate us from him, but it is impossible to examine his 
character and history without feeling, if not affection 
and sympathy, at least profound respect and admiration 
for one of the great Reformers of Europe and of the 
great Christians of France." 

Renan, a skeptic: "Calvin was one of those absolute 
men, cast complete in one mold, who is taken in wholly 
at a single glance: one letter, one action suffices for a 
judgment of him. There were no folds in that inflexible 
soul, which never knew doubt or hesitation Care- 
less of wealth, of titles, of honors, indifferent to pomp, 
modest in his life, apparently humble, sacrificing every- 
thing to the desire of making others like himself I hardly 
know of a man, save Ignatius Loyola, who could match 

him in those terrible transports It is surprising 

that a man who appears to us in his life and writings 



TRIBUTES TO THE MEMORY OF CALVIN. 105 

so unsympathetic should have been the center of an 
immense movement in his generation, and that this harsh 
and severe tone should have exerted so great an influence 
on the minds of his contemporaries. He was the most 
Christian man of his century." 

Mosheim: Calvin was venerated, even by his enemies, 
for his genius, learning, eloquence, and other endow- 
ments." 

Von Mueller, the great historian of Switzerland: 
"John Calvin had the spirit of an ancient lawgiver, a 
genius and characteristic which gave him in part un- 
mistakable advantages, and failings which were only the 
excess of virtues, by the assistance of which he carried 
through his objects. He had also, like other Reformers, 
an indefatigable industry, with a fixed regard to a cer- 
tain end, and invincible perseverance in principles and 
duty during his life, and at his death the courage and 
dignity of an ancient Roman censor. He contributed 
greatly to the development and advance of the human 
intellect, and more, indeed, than he himself foresaw." 

Henry, author of two learned biographies of Calvin : 
"The whole tendency of Calvin was practical; learning 
was subordinate; the salvation of the world, the truth 
was to him the main thing. His spiritual tendency was 
not philosophical, but his dialectical bent ran principles 
to their utmost consequences. He had an eye to the 
minutest details. His former study of law had trained 
him for business. He was a watchman over the whole 
church. All his theological writings excel in acuteness, 
dialectics, and warmth of conviction. He had great elo- 
quence at command, but despised the art of rhetoric." 

Haetisser, Professor of History at Heidelberg: "John 
Calvin, the most remarkable personage of the time. He 
settled the basis for the development of many state? 



;06 



JOHN CALVIN. 



and churches. He stamped the form of the Reformation 
in countries to which he was a stranger. The French 
date the beginnings of their literary development from 
him, and his influence was not restricted to the sphere 
of religion, but embraced their intellectual life in gen- 
eral; no one else has so permanently influenced the 
spirit and form of their written language as he. 

At a time when Europe had no solid results of reform 
to show, this little state of Geneva stood up as a great 
power; year by year it sent forth Apostles into the 
world, who preached its doctrines everywhere, and it be- 
came the most dreaded counterpoise to Rome. 

It was impossible to oppose Caraffa, Philip II, and 
the Stuarts, with Luther's passive resistance; men were 
wanted who were ready to wage war to the knife, and 
such was the Calvinistic school. It everywhere accepted 
the challenge; throughout all the conflicts for political 
and religious liberty, up to the time of the first emigra- 
tion to America, in France, the Netherlands, England 
and Scotland, we recognize the Genevan school." 

Domer: " Calvin was equally great in intellect and 
character, lovely in social life, full of tender sympathy 
and faithfulness to friends, yielding and forgiving 
toward personal offenses, but inexorably severe when he 
saw the honor of God obstinately and malignantly at- 
tacked. He combined French fire and practical good 
sense with German depth and soberness. He moved 
as freely in the world of ideas as in the business of church 
government. He was an architectonic genius in scitoc 
and practical life, always with an eye to the holiness 
and majesty of God." 

Kahnis, a Lutheran: "The fear of God was the soul 
of his piety, the rock-like certainty of his election be- 
fore the foundation of the world was his power, and the 



tributes to the MEMORY of caLvin. 10? 

doing of the will of God his single aim, which he pur- 
sued with trembling and fear No other Keformer 

has so w^ell demonstrated the truth of Christ's word 
that, in the kingdom of God, dominion is service. No 
other had such an energy of self-sacrifice, such an irre- 
fragable conscientiousness in the greatest as well as the 
smallest things, such a disciplined power. This man, 
whose dying body was only held together by the will 
flaming from his eye, had a majesty of character which 
commanded the veneration of his contemporaries." 

Hall: " Reverend Calvin, whose judgment I so much 
honor, that I reckon him among the best interpreters of 
Scriptures since the Apostles left the earth." 

Baxter: "I know no man, since the Apostle's days, 
whom I value and honor more than Calvin, and whose 
judgment in all things, one with another, I more esteem 
and come nearer to." 

Sir William Hamilton: "Looking merely to his learn- 
ing and ability, Calvin was superior to all modern, per- 
haps to all ancient divines. Succeeding ages have cer- 
tainly not exhibited his equal. To find his peer we must 
ascend at least to Aquinas or Augustin." 

Cunningham, the successor of Chalmers, says: "Cal- 
vin is the man, who, next to St. Paul, has done most 
good to mankind." 

Dr. John Tulloch: "Nothing, perhaps, more strikes 
us than the contrast between the single naked energy 
which his character presents and of which his name has 
become symbolical, and the grand issues which have gone 
forth from it. Scarcely anywhere else can we trace 
such an impervious potency of intellectual and moral 
influence emanating from so narrow a center. 

"There is in almost every respect a singular dissimi- 
larity between the Genevan and Wittenberg reformer. 



108 



JOHN CALVIN. 



In personal, moral and intellectual features, they stand 
contrasted — Luther with his massive frame, and full, big 
face and deep melancholy eyes; Calvin, of moderate 
stature, pale and dark complexion, and sparkling eyes, 
that burned nearly to the moment of his death. (Beza: 
Vita Calv.) Luther, fond and jovial, relishing his beer 
and hearty family repasts with his wife and children; 
Calvin, spare and frugal, for many years taking only a 
meal a day, and scarcely needing sleep. In the one, we 
see a rich and complex and buoyant and affectionate 
nature touching humanity at every point, in the other, 
a stern and grave unity of moral character. Both were 
naturally of a somewhat proud and imperious temper, 
but the violence of Luther is w^arm and boisterous,. that 
of Calvin keen and zealous. It might have been a very 
uncomfortable thing, as Melancthon felt, to be exposed 
to Luther's occasional storms; but after the storm was 
over, it was pleasant to be folded once more to the great 
heart that was sorry for its excesses. To be the ot>ject 
of Calvin's dislike and anger was something to fill one 
with dread, not only for the moment, but long after- 
wards, and at a distance, as poor Castellio felt when 
he gathered the pieces of driftwood on the banks of the 
Ehine at Basel. 

"In intellect, as in personal features, the one was 
grand, massive and powerful, through depth and com- 
prehension of feeling a profound but exaggerated in- 
sight, and a soaring eloquence; the other was no less 
grand and powerful, through clearness and correctness 
of judgment, vigor and consistency of reasoning and 
weightiness of expression. Both are alike memorable 
in the service which they rendered to their native tongue 
— in the increased compass, flexibility, and felicitous 
mastery which they imparted to it. The Latin works of 



TRIBUTES TO THE MEMORY OF CALVIN. 109 

Calvin are greatly superior in elegance of style, sym- 
metry of method, and proportionate vigor of argument. 
He maintains an academic elevation of tone, even when 
keenly agitated in temper, while Luther, as Mr. Hal- 
lam has it, sometimes descends to mere "bellowing in 
bad Latin.' ' Yet there is a coldness in the elevation of 
Calvin, and in his correct and well-balanced sentences, 
for which we should like ill to exchange the kindly 
though rugged paradoxes of Luther. The German had 
the more rich and teeming — the Genevan the harder, 
more serviceable and enduring mind. When interrupted 
in dictating for several hours, Beza tells us that he 
could return and commence where he had left off; and 
that amidst all the multiplicity of his engagements, he 
never forgot what he required to know for the perform- 
ance of any duty. 

"As preachers, Calvin seems to have commanded a 
scarcely less powerful success than Luther, although of 
a different character — the one stimulating and rousing, 
' c boiling over in every direction ' ' — the other instructive, 
argumentative, and calm in the midst of his vehemence 
(Beza: Vita Calv.). Luther flashed forth his feelings 
at the moment, never being able to compose what might 
be called a regular sermon, but seizing the principal 
subject, and turning all his attention to that alone. 
Calvin was elaborate and careful in his sermons as in 
everything else. The one thundered and lightened, fill- 
ing the souls of his hearers now with shadowy awe, and 
now with an intense glow of spiritual excitement; the 
other, like the broad daylight, filled them with a more 
diffusive though less exhilarating clearness 

"An impression of majesty and yet of sadness must 
ever linger around the name of Calvin. He was great 
and we admire him. The world needed him and we 



110 



JOHN CALVtN. 



honor him ; but we cannot love him. He repels our affec- 
tions while he extorts our admiration; and while we 
recognize the worth, and the divine necessity of his life 
and work, we are thankful to survey them at a distance, 
and to believe that there are also other modes of divinely 
governing the world, and advancing the kingdom of 
righteousness and truth. 

"Limited, as compared with Luther, in his personal 
influence apparently less the man of the hour in a great 
crisis of human progress, Calvin towers far above Luther 
in the general influence over the world of thought and 
the course of history, which a mighty intellect, inflexible 
in its convictions and constructive in its genius, never 
fails to exercise." 

Dr. Smith: "Calvin's system of doctrine and polity 
has shaped more minds and entered into more nations 
than that of any other Reformer. In every land it made 
men strong against the attempted interference of the 
secular power with the rights of the Christians. It gave 
courage to the Huguenots ; it shaped the theology of the 
Palatinate ; it prepared the Dutch for the heroic defense 
of their national rights ; it has controlled Scotland to the 
present hour; it formed the Puritanism of England; it 
has been the basis of the New England character, and 
everywhere it has led to the way in practical reforms. 
His theology assumed different types in the various 
countries into which it penetrated, while retaining its 
fundamental traits." 

Dr. Philip S chaff, who, on the whole, shows little sym- 
pathy for Calvin, nevertheless writes: "Upon the whole, 
the verdict of history is growingly in favor of Calvin. 
He improves upon acquaintance. Those who know him 
best esteem him most. All impartial writers admit the 
purity and integrity, if not the sanctity of his character 



TRIBUTES TO THE MEMORY OF CALVIN. Ill 

and his absolute freedom from love of gain and notori- 
ety. Those who judge of his character from his conduct 
in the case of Servetus, and of his theology from the 
"decretum horribile," see the spots on the sun, but 
not the sun itself. He must be reckoned as one of the 
greatest and best of men whom God raised in the history 
of Christianity. He has been called by competent judges 
of different creeds and schools, "the theologian par ex- 
cellence," "the Aristotle of the reformation," "the 
Thomas Aquinas of the Eeformed Church," "the Ly- 
curgus of a Christian democracy," "the pope of Gen- 
eva." He has been compared as a church ruler to> 
Gregory VII and Innocent III. The sceptical Renan 
even, who entirely dissents from his theology, calls him 
"the most Christian man of his age." Such a com- 
bination of theoretic and practical pre-eminence is with- 
out parallel in history. He may be called a Christian 
Elijah. His symbol was a hand offering the sacrifice 
of a burning heart to God. The Council of Geneva were 
impressed with ' ' the great majesty ' ' of his character. This 
significant expression accounts for his overawing power 
over his many enemies in Geneva, who might easily have 
crushed him at any time. Calvin's character is less at- 
tractive than Luther's or Zwingli's, but he left his 
church in a much better condition. He lacked the genial 
element of humor and pleasantry; he was a Christian 
stoic : stern, unbending, severe, yet with fires of passion 
and affection glowing beneath the marble surface. He 
surpassed both in consistency and self-discipline and 
still exerts more influence than any other reformer upon 
the Protestant Churches of the Latin and English races 
Calvin's intellectual endowments were of the highest 
order and thoroughly disciplined. His talents rose to 
the full height of genius. He never wrote a dull line.. 



112 



JOHN CALVIN. 



His judgment was sc exact, as Beza remarks, it often ap- 
peared like prophecy. ' ' 

Dr. Piper: "In Germany, the common nicknames are: 
Luther, Dickkopf ; Calvin, Spitzkopf ; i. e., Luther, thick- 
head ; Calvin, longhead. In the vulgar wit of the crowd 
there is often found a good deal of shrewd judgment. 
The two names indicate the key-note of the two char- 
acters. Luther's invincible stubbornness and daring 
swayed the minds of others in a simply inexplicable 
manner, and Calvin's keenness, which at times carried 
him almost beyond limits. His lofty soul turned his 
clear gaze towards God's countenance and the face of 
His holy angels, of w^hom he so often makes mention, 
as if he could with his bodily eyes almost see the in- 
visible. From Calvin a new civilization proceeded, yet 
it is only by higher natures that he is understood. By 
weak and inferior minds, and anti-Christian hearts he 
has always been misunderstood and hated, even cursed, 
as Luther also is." 




Calvin at Study 



CHAPTER XIX. 



CALVIN, THE THEOLOGIAN. 

Calvin was an exceedingly busy man. This will be 
sufficiently apparent from the review we have given of 
the events of his career. In this and the following chap- 
ters we intend to summarize his activity as a systematic 
theologian, a Bible student, a preacher, a pastor, an edu- 
cator, and a statesman. 

It is generally admitted that Melancthon was right 
when he greeted Calvin as "the theologian" among the 
reformers. Scaliger considers him "the greatest genius 
the world had seen since the apostles;" the Roman 
Catholic bishop of Valence called him "the greatest di- 
vine in the world." Calvin's nature and training con- 
spired to make him an eminent systematic theologian. 
Conspicuous among the many books he wrote are his 
"Institutes" and the numerous commentaries on the 
various books of the Bible. 

Of Calvin's first-named work, the "Institutes of the 
Christian Religion," a brief account has been given in 
a previous chapter. By the enemies of the reformation, 
the book was called the "Koran of the Heretics," be- 
cause it was known and used and revered in all sections 
of the Reformed Church. Calvin repeatedly declares 
that he had no purely scientific or dogmatic end in view 
in the composition of this work. It was his desire to 
lead good and faithful souls into the way of salvation. 
He never lost sight of this great end. It is his distin- 
guishing quality, and it is evident in all parts of the 
book. His endeavor to combine simplicity with scien- 
tific exactness, places the work in singular contrast with 

114 



CALVIN, THE THEOLOGIAN. 



115 



those written on a similar plan in later times. It makes 
the book equally useful for the learned and the un- 
learned Christian. To accomplish the purpose of the 
book, he employed every means at his command — the 
Scriptures, the writings of the fathers, his own Christian 
experiences, his strong reasoning faculties and his con- 
science enlightened by the Spirit of God. It will ever 
be to Calvin's great honor that speculative as he was by 
nature he uniformly subjected his powerful mind to 
the Word of God, and consecrated his logical acuteness 
to the service of the truth. 

The first edition of the "Institutes" was published in 
1535, at Basel, in the Latin language and contained only 
six chapters, entitled as follows: 1. "Of the Law (an 
explanation of the decalogue) ; 2. "Of Faith (an expla- 
nation of the Apostle's Creed);" 3. "Of Prayer (an 
explanation of the Lord's Prayer) ; 4. Of the Sacra- 
ments (baptism and the Lord's Supper) ;" 5. "Of the 
Sacraments (the falsity of the five which the Romish 
church has added) ;" 6. "Of Christian Liberty (power 
of the church and the state)." The final revision of 
1559 has eighty-four chapters. So, while he never 
changed the fundamental ideas of the book, Calvin never 
ceased revising and completing their presentation. 

Calvin is often compared with the church father Au- 
gustine, who died 430 as Bishop of Hippo, in North 
Africa. Both men lay stress on the teaching of St. Paul, 
and both strongly believe in the doctrine of predestina- 
tion. While Augustine, perhaps, ought to be ranked 
higher as a spiritual writer, Calvin is no doubt the 
greater as an acute and logical reasoner. He is simpler 
and more energetic than Augustine, and keeps his object 
more constantly in view, 



116 



JOHN CALVIN. 



Two weapons were at once called into action to destroy 
the influence of this great book — controversy and sup- 
pression. Cotton, the confessor of Henry IV, wrote 
against it in his "Catholic Institutes," and in Paris 4he 
university ordered the book to be burned in public. 
On the other hand, the writings of great men in former 
ages and at the present time, are full of praise of this 
great work. The German theologian Bretschneider says: 
"While we have no work by either Luther or Zwingli, 
in which they might have exhibited their whole doctrine 
reduced to a system, and accompanied by the necessary 
proofs and so might have furnished a defense against 
unnumbered controversies, Calvin, on the other hand, 
at an early period connected the truths of the reforma- 
tion in a systematic form; defended every point with 
proof, the strongest and most excellent know T n at that 
time, and secured them against all opposition. Of this, 
his justly celebrated "Institutes' 7 afford ample testi- 
mony, — a work which ought not to be so neglected as it 
is by the theologians of our times, and not even by the 
Lutherans. It contains a treasure of admirable thoughts, 
of acute explications and fine remarks, and is written in 
an elegant, lively and eloquent style. The Lutheran 
Church has only something similar in Melancthon's 
famous "Loci," which, however, is not to be compared 
with Calvin's work for close arrangement, solidity of 
proof, strength of argument, and completeness of system. ' ' 
Nor is this admiration confined to Orthodox Protestants. 
Dr. Baur, the founder of the Tubingen school of his- 
torical criticism, declares this book of Calvin to be "in 
every respect a truly classical work, distinguished in a 
high degree by originality and acuteness of conception, 
systematic consistency and clear, luminous method." 
And Dr. Hase pointedly calls it "the grandest scientific 



CALVIN, THE THEOLOGIAN. 



117 



justification of Augustinianism, full of religious depth 
with inexorable consistency of thought." 

Next in order of time, but of equal importance, come 
his great commentaries on the Bible. Almost to the end 
of his life he either wrote new commentaries or issued 
revised editions. "With the exception of the books of 
Judges, Ruth, Samuel, Kings, Esther, Nehemiah, Ezra, 
Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, The Song of Solomon and Reve- 
lation, Calvin commented on the whole of the Holy Scrip- 
tures. In all of these boobs may be noticed four im- 
portant qualities — doctrinal impartiality, exegetical tact, 
great learning and deep piety. In his commentary on 
Romans, Calvin expressed his own ideas on the duty of 
a commentator: "I remember that when we had a 
friendly conversation together, three years ago, on the 
best manner of interpreting Scripture, that which you 
preferred seemed also the most useful to me. We both 
considered the most excellent quality in an expositor is 
clearness combined with brevity, it being his particular 
duty to exhibit the spirit of the writer, whence he errs 
from his proper line in proportion as he turns the atten- 
tion of the reader from the writer on which he is em- 
ployed. We therefore wished that some one might arise 
among those who devote themselves to this branch of 
theology, who would undertake to facilitate the study of 
Scripture, without carrying the student through too 
great a mass of commentaries. How far I have succeeded 
in this attempt, I leave you and my readers to judge. 
Many writers, both in ancient and modern times, have 
been engaged on this epistle. Their labors have been 
well employed, for he who understands this portion of 
Scripture has opened to himself a door by which he 
may proceed to the comprehension of the whole of the 
<divine Word. Among the later expositors, Melancthon 



118 



JOHN CALVIN. 



is distinguished for learning, ingenuity and skill — qual- 
ities which he has exhibited in all the various depart- 
ments of literature. Hence he has thrown much more 
light on Scripture than those who preceded him. His 
object, however, appears to have been to examine only 
the more remarkable difficulties of Scripture. He, there- 
fore, designedly passes over many things which may 
perplex an ordinary mind., Bullinger followed and 
earned much praise uniting, as he did, with learning, 
great readiness and ability. At length, Bucer has given 
us the results of his studies, and set the crown to all. 
Bucer, as is well known to you, is surpassed by none 
of his contemporaries in depth or variety of learning, in 
clearness of intellect," in extent of reading, or other ex- 
cellencies, but he deserves the still more eminent praise 
that he has devoted himself with greater diligence than 
any one of our times to the exposition of Scripture. To 
measure myself with these men would be a rivalry that 
has never entered my thoughts; he thus continues to 
enjoy the honor and respect accorded them by all good 
men. But still it will be granted me, I trust, that 
no human work can ever be so perfect in its structure 
as to leave nothing for the diligence of those who come 
after to accomplish. All that I venture to say for my- 
self is, that I do not regard the present work, which I 
have been led to undertake with no other thought than 
that of promoting the good of the church, as altogether 
useless. Philip (Melancthon) has expounded only such 
chapters as he found necessary to his object. Bucer is 
too lengthy to be read by men who have many other 
things to engage them, and too profound to be under- 
stood by humble and not very attentive minds.' ' Ar- 
minius, Calvin's great opponent in Holland, has this 
to say on the .commentaries : 6 6 After the Holy Scriptures, 



CALVIN, THE THEOLOGIAN. 



119 



I exhort the students to read the commentaries of Cal- 
vin ; for I tell them that he is incomparable in the in- 
terpretation of Scripture, and that his commentaries 
ought to be held in greater estimation than all that is 
delivered to us in the writings of the ancient Christian 
fathers ; so that, in a certain eminent spirit of prophecy, 
I give the pre-eminence to him beyond most others, in- 
deed beyond them all." — A most remarkable, almost 
unique, testimony from a doctrinal opponent. 

Professor Tholuck, who published a new edition of 
Calvin's then almost forgotten commentaries, makes the 
following observations on Calvin's exegetical talent: 
"Calvin was skillful and happy in his exposition of 
grammatical sense, in his correct explanation of par- 
ticular expressions and in his inquiries into the historical, 
poetical and prophetic sense of important passages. We 
admire his simple, elegant style, his dogmatic freedom, 
the tact with which he treats his subjects, his great 
learning and profound piety. His diction is elegant, and 
his expressions are neat and to the point. He does not 
fall into digressions, as Luther and his friends so often 
did, who were engaged in explaining particular heads 
of doctrine, rather than in writing connected commen- 
taries. Calvin also breaks out occasionally into violent 
declamation against the pope; but he does this much 
less frequently than his contemporaries. Severe dogma- 
tician that he was he avoids expositions in favor of 
specific doctrines if thereby he had to contradict or- 
dinary laws of language. Unlike Luther, he employed 
historical criticism rather than depend too much on sub- 
jective opinion. He spent less time in critical inquiries, his 
interest lying in the direction of theological exposition. 
Very few forced explanations are to be found in his 



120 



JOHN CALVIN. 



commentaries. His learning is evident but he leaves it 
in the background. 

We append here a few extracts on Calvin's work as 
an expositor from Dr. F. W. Farrer, a man in general 
not friendly to the reformer. He says: "The greatest 
exegete and theologian of the reformation, was undoubt- 
edly Calvin. His commentaries, almost alone among 
those of his epoch, are still a living force, which is proved 
by their translation into various languages and their 
re-publication in every generation until very recently. 
They are far more profound than those of Zwingli, more 
thorough and scientific, if less original and less spiritual, 
than those of Luther. He is one of the greatest inter- 
preters of Scripture who ever lived. He w^as a foe to 
all vagueness, prolixity and digression. He never drags 
his weary reader through a bewildering mass of opinions, 
of which some are absurd, a majority impossible, and of 
which all but one must be wrong. He will not tamper 
with allegory, even for homiletic purposes. He says: 
"It is better to confess ignorance than to play with 
frivolous guesses. He did not hold the theory of verbal 
dictation. He will never defend or harmonize what he 
regards as an oversight or mistake in the sacred writers. 
In Genesis 3 : 15 he says that "seed" is a collective term 
for "posterity," and was only interpreted of Christ 
by subsequent experience. He will not admit the force 
of arguments in favor of the Trinity drawn from the 
plural "let us make," nor from the three angels who 
appeared to Abraham, nor from the Trisagion (Isaiah 
6:3.) He anticipates modern criticism in his views 
about the Messianic prophecies. He strongly believed 
in the reality of those predictions but held that they 
were primarily applicable to the events and circum- 
stances of the days when uttered. He conceives it to 



CALVIN, THE THEOLOGIAN. 



121 



be the first business of an interpreter to let his author 
say what he does say, instead of attributing to him what 
we think he ought to say. Like Luther, he was in love 
with the Psalter, which he calls 'an anatomy of all the 
parts of the soul.' There are instances in which the 
dogmatist gets the better of the exegete." 



CHAPTER XX. 



CALVIN, THE PREACHER AND PASTOR. 

Calvin, unlike Luther and Zwingli, had not received 
full ordination to the Roman priesthood, but only the 
tonsure. The assertion of the Romanists and Prelatists 
that " Calvin was never ordained" is, however, untrue. 
He was appointed by the Council of Geneva and set 
apart by the presbytery which existed when he came 
to Geneva. Calvin several times alludes to his ordination 
but never mentions time and circumstances of the same. 

Homiletics, in the modern sense of the term, did not 
exist at the time of the reformation ; the art of speaking, 
or speaking as an art, was even despised, and the in- 
spired Word only was desired. Yet, following the 
natural bent of his mind, Calvin laid stress on logical 
arrangement and was far more orderly in his discourses 
than Luther, while of Luther's popular eloquence he had 
very little. Conspicuous in his sermons are the wealth of 
thought, the depth of judgment and the originality of 
his ideas. His style is remarkably simple and his method 
synthetic. Calvin preached extempore. He frequently 
declares that the power of God could only pour itself 
forth in extemporaneous speech. In his letter to Lord 
Somerset, he expresses himself very distinctly against 
the reading of sermons, saying: "The people must be 
taught in such a manner, that they may be inwardly 
convinced and made to feel the truth of what the Apostle 
says, that the Word of God 'is a two-edged sword.' 
I say this to your Highness because there is too little 
of living preaching in your kingdom, sermons there 
being mostly read or recited. I understand well enough 

123 



124 



JOHN CALVIN. 



what obliges you to adopt this habit. There are few 
good, useful preachers, such as you wish to have; 
and you fear that levity and foolish imaginations might 
be the consequence, as is often the case, of the introduc- 
tion of a new system. But all this must yield to the 
command of Christ which orders the preaching of the 
Gospel. And this preaching must not be dead, but liv- 
ing, for doctrine, for correction, for edification. So 
that when a Christian enters the church, he may be 
moved to penitence, and be inwardly convinced. The 
preachers ought not to wish to shine in the ornaments 
of rhetoric, but the spirit of God should be echoed by 
their voices." Calvin broke loose from the system of 
the pericopes of the church year and used free texts. 
Some of his extant sermons are based on four texts. 
His sermons in the form in which we have them are 
rather short. It is said that he rarely preached longer 
than half an hour. Luther also has expressed himself, 
very humorously, in favor of brevity: "Tritt fest auf, 
thu's Maul auf, hor bald auf. " Calvin's sermons which 
have come to us were taken down by students. One 
of his hearers writes: "Calvin being asthmatic and 
speaking very deliberately, it is easy to write down all 
that he says." But for this remark, the style of the 
sermons would lead us to suppose that they had been 
spoken with great fire, rapidity and force. It is even 
said that he often broke off, and made long pauses, to 
give the hearers time to consider his remarks. Although 
not naturally eloquent himself, he appreciated the power 
of eloquence. "You must take care/' he says, "as far 
as possible, to have good trumpets, such as may penetrate 
deepest into the heart." His fame as a thoughtful and 
impressive speaker remained unimpaired to his latent 
years, and sometimes attracted the notice of the govern- 



CALVIN, THE PREACHER AND PASTOR. 



125 



ment, as seen from the minutes of the council of Jun-3 
19, 1559, which say that a great multitude of people 
attended the sermons of Calvin. One unique institu- 
tion, the "congregational" preaching, was introduced 
by him and was continued for two hundred years after 
his death. It consisted of a sermon to the adult por- 
tion of the congregation preached on Friday. After 
the sermon, any one was at liberty to make remarks, ask 
questions and discuss the sermon with the preacher. 
This was conducive to intelligent instruction of the 
people and awakened great interest in religious subjects. 

We append here Dr. Dargan 's estimate of Calvin as a 
preacher. He says: "Beza somewhere naively remarks 
that if Farel's fire and Viret's winsomeness had been 
added to Calvin's qualities, the combination would have 
made a well-nigh perfect preacher. As it was, the de- 
fects of Calvin's character showed themselves in his 
work as a preacher. There is lack of sympathy and 
charm, deficiency of imagination, sparing use of illus- 
trations, no poetic turn, no moving appeal, no soaring 
eloquence. But, on the other hand, the virtues of the 
man and the endowments of the intellect were great and 
telling. Courage, candor, love of truth, devotion to duty, 
fidelity to principle and to friends, earnestness of pur- 
pose, consecration to God and absorption in his work — 
these and other splendid traits make us almost forget the 
defects that have been mentioned. And his marvellous 
intellect — capacious, penetrating, profound, so wins ad- 
miration that we have to remember that, in him sym- 
pathy and imagination were not equal to reason and in- 
sight. 

In Calvin's preaching, the expository method of the 
Reformation preachers finds emphasis. His commen- 
taries were the fruits of his preaching and lecturing, 



126 



JOHN CALVIN. 



and his sermons were commentaries extended and ap- 
plied. Mostly in the homily form of verse by verse com- 
ment, there is yet in them a march of thought, a logical 
sequence that simply did not choose to express itself in 
the scholastic analysis. In truth, this lack of analysis 
and clearly defined connection is remarkable in a man of 
Calvin's logical power. It shows how the commentator 
got the better of the preacher. Yet his sermons are not 
mere commentaries. There is a quickness of perception, 
a sureness of touch, a power of expression that unite 
to make the thought of Scripture stand out and produce 
its own impression without the aid of the orator's art. 
The style was clear, vigorous and pointed, without orna- 
ment, but chastely and severely elegant ; without warmth, 
but intense and vigorous. We do not wonder that Boss- 
uet, Catholic and orator, should find Calvin's style 
"triste" (sad, gloomy) ; but Beza, who knew the effect 
of his preaching, said of him "that every word weighed 
a pound — tot verba tot pondera. " Calvin had no strik- 
ing presence, nor rich and sonorous voice, but he had a 
commanding will that needed no physical strength to 
supplement it, and a sustained intensity of conviction 
that could spare the help of a flowing eloquence. 

And so, though the highest qualities of oratory found 
no place in Calvin 's preaching, the power of his thought, 
the force of his will, the excellence of his style, and, 
above all, the earnestness with which he made the truth 
of God shine forth in his words made him a great 
preacher and deeply impressed on his hearers the great 
verities of the Christian faith. 

While the sermon, with Calvin, was the centre of the 
service, it was not the all in all. He believed in plain 
yet impressive preliminary services. As in all Re- 
formed churches, extemporaneous prayer was encour- 



CALVIN, THE PREACHER AND PASTOR. 



127 



aged but for the sake of uniformity and to guard the 
people against the eccentricities of their ministers, he 
introduced a liturgy. Here, again, he differed from 
Luther and Zwingli. The former retained too much of 
the Romish Mass-service, and in German Switzerland 
the order of service to this day is extremely bare and 
plain, while Zwingli 's communion service was almost 
an abbreviated mass, as far as the order and fullness of 
material is concerned. Calvin 's creative mind intro- 
duced new forms, in which he followed the order of 
service in the churches at Strasburg and w T hich he based 
on the order of the primitive services as described by 
Justin Martyn, who lived in the second century, in his 
Larger Apology. Dr. Ebrard sees in Calvin's order of 
service a masterpiece of order and simplicity, combined 
with reverence and dignity. The elements were as 
follows: 1. Reading of the Ten Commandments by a lay 
reader; 2. Confession of sin, the people kneeling; 3. 
Psalm singing ; 4. General prayer ; 5. Text and sermon ; 
6. Free prayer; 7. Psalm singing; 8. Benediction. In 
some copies we find inserted the "Apostolic Salutation," 
after the confession, and the Apostles' Creed before the 
benediction. The pulpit furniture in Geneva was re- 
duced to the pulpit proper, in which the minister re- 
mains sitting during the entire service, a reading desk 
for the lay reader and a plain table for the communion. 

Calvin expresses his love of simplicity in a letter to 
Farel, where he says: "I told Melancthon to his face 
that I was displeased with the multiplicity of ceremonies 
which Luther suffered to exist. But Melancthon an- 
swered that it was necessary in Saxony to yield some 
what to the canonists, and that Luther himself liked 
the ceremonies which they were obliged to retain as 
little as he did the flatness of the Swiss churches/ ' 



128 



JOHN CALVIN. 



Calvin was a churchman in the good sense of the 
word. He laid the utmost stress on church life, as a 
means of developing and directing the life of the indi- 
vidual. "The church is our mother, " he writes. "This 
designation itself shows how useful and necessary it is 
to know her. For we cannot otherwise enter into life 
than if we are generated in her womb, nourished at her 
breasts, and kept under her guardianship and tutelage 
until, freed from this mortal body, we become like the 
angels. Accordingly, God has endowed her with a teaching 
office, to which believers are bound to render obedi- 
ence, and has bestowed upon her the duty and right 
to enact laws and to administer church discipline, be- 
cause no society can exist without order and discipline. ' ' 
He compares doctrine with the soul and discipline with 
the nerves, through which the different members are 
bound together and kept in order. Of course, by the 
church, he means something different from the priestly 
organization of the Romanists. He believes in the church 
invisible, composed of true believers only; but also in 
the church visible, the marks of which are the right ad- 
ministration of the sacraments and the preaching of the 
Word. He had little appreciation of the church year. 
While the Reformed churches in German Switzerland 
celebrated the great feasts of* the year, Geneva abolished 
the w^eek-day feasts, and kept only the Sabbath. This 
was done by the radicalism of Farel, before Calvin en- 
tered Geneva, and, in some degree, the latter disap- 
proved of it. Bullinger writes to him: "My dear 
brother, I am anxious to see liberty preserved in suet 
matters which I perceive to have flourished in the 
churches from the very days of the Apostles." 

Of Calvin's pastoral work, his organization and his 
administration of discipline, we have spoken at length 



CALVIN, THE PREACHER AND PASTOR. 129 

in previous chapters. He could. truly say, "The world 
is my parish." By thousands of letters, addressed to 
high and low, among nations all over Europe, he en- 
deavored to spread the Reformed faith and confirmed 
those who had already embraced it. This correspondence 
begins in his youth (May, 1528), and is only closed upon 
his death-bed (May, 1564). Nothing can exceed the 
interest of this correspondence, in which a life of the 
most absorbing interest is reflected, and in which ef- 
fusions of friendship are mingled with the more serious 
questions of theology, and with the heroic breathings 
of faith. In those letters, Calvin followed with an ob- 
servant eye the great drama of the reformation, mark- 
ing its triumphs; and its reserves in every state of 
Europe. By virtue of his surpassing genius, with an 
almost universal apostolate, he wielded an influence as 
varied and as plastic as his activity. He exhorts with 
the same authority the humble ministers of the gospel 
and the powerful monarchs of England, France, Sweden 
and Poland. He holds communion with Luther and 
Melancthon, animates Knox, encourages Coligny, and 
to Farel and Beza he pours out the overflowings of 
a heart filled with love. His letters establish foreign 
churches, strengthen martyrs, dictate to the Protestant 
princes wise counsels, negotiate, teach and give utter- 
ance to words of power, which, even to-day, are re- 
ceived by his friends as part of Calvin's political and 
religious testament. One point in the reformer's world- 
wide activity must not be overlooked by Americans. He 
was the only reformer who interested himself in the 
New World. When the great Huguenot admiral, Co- 
ligny, sent a colony of Reformed people to Brazil, he 
requested Calvin to send Reformed ministers along with 
them. The reformer heeded the request and in 1556 



130 



JOHN CALVIN. 



Calvin sent two Reformed ministers from Geneva to 
America for the purpose of preaching not only to the 
colonists but also to convert the Indians. 



CHAPTER XXI. 



CALVIN, THE EDUCATOR. 

In a previous chapter, we have spoken of the reform- 
er's interest in popular and higher education. The 
reformer himself was not only a man of great intellect 
but also highly educated and endowed with learning 
beyond most of his contemporaries. His first book on 
Seneca's "dementia" is usually referred to as an ex- 
ample of his erudition. Lindsay says of it: "The author 
shows that he knew as minutely as extensively the whole 
round of classical literature accessible to his times. He 
quotes, and that aptly, from fifty-five separate Latin au- 
thors — from thirty-three separate works of Cicero, from 
all the works of Horace and Ovid, from five comedies of 
Terence, and from all the works of Virgil. He quotes 
from twenty-two separate Greek authors — from five or 
six of the principal writings of Aristotle and from four 
of the writings of Plato and of Plutarch. Calvin does 
not quote Plautus, but his use of the phrase 'remoram 
f acere ' makes it likely that he was well acquainted with 
that writer also. The future theologian was also ac- 
quainted with many of the fathers— with Augustine, 
Lactantius, Jerome, Synesius and Cyprian." At the 
famous disputation at Lausanne, when the question of the 
Real Presence was discussed, one of the Romanists read a 
carefully prepared paper, in the course of which he said 
that the Protestants despised and neglected the ancient 
Fathers, fearing their authority, which was against their 
news. Then Calvin rose. He began with the sarcastic 
remark that the people who reverenced the Fathers 
might spend some little time in turning over their pages, 

131 



CALVIN. THE EDUCATOR. 



before they spoke about them. He quoted from one 
Father after another, — -"Cyprian, discussing the sub- 
ject now under review in the third epistle of his second 

book of Epistles, says Tertullian, refuting the 

error of Marcion, says '. The author of some im- 

perfect commentaries on St. Matthew, which some have 
attributed to St. John Chrysostom, in the 11th homily, 

about the middle, says St. Augustine, in his 23rd 

epistle, near the end, says Augustine, in one of 

his homilies on St. John's Gospel, the 8th or the 9th, I 

am not sure at this moment which, says " and so 

on. He knew the ancient Fathers as no one else in the 
century. He had not taken their opinions second-hand 
from Peter of Lombardy's " Sententiae ' ' as did most of 
the schoolman and contemporary Romanist theologians. 
It was the first time that he displayed, almost accident- 
ally, his marvellous patriotic knowledge, — a knowledge 
for which Melancthon could never sufficiently admire 
him. 

Calvin insisted that education must begin with train- 
ing in the home. To have successful home training, a 
generation of Christian fathers and mothers must be 
developed. To accomplish this was a conscious part of 
his famous church discipline. From the very beginning 
he insisted, like Luther, on the establishment of public 
schools, as he did not believe in the Eomish maxim that 
ignorance is the mother of piety. The founding of the 
Academy has been described in a former chapter. He 
was constantly active in drawing some of the best edu- 
cators whom the slender means of Geneva could induce 
to come to that city. He was anxious that the wealth 
confiscated from the Catholics should not all go into the 
purse of the nobility and princes, but should be used for 
the education of the people. To Duke Somerset, Lord 



134 



JOHN CALVIN. 



Protector of England, he writes : " It is an evil that the 
revenue of the church is diverted and wasted, so that 
there is not wherewithal to support worthy men who 
might be fit to discharge the office of true pastors. And 
thus ignorant priests are installed, who spread great con- 
fusion. I quite believe that it has not been your fault 
that matters have not been better regulated; be pleased 
to exert all your might in correcting this abuse." In 
a letter to King Edward VI of England, he writes on the 
same subject : " I beseech you to see that property which 
ought to be held sacred be not converted to profane 
uses. For, in this way, the gospel would always be 
kept back from want of schools, which ought to be 
the very pillars thereof." Calvin insisted on a highly 
educated ministry. The examination of the candidates 
was conducted by those who were already in the min- 
istry and included both intellectual attainments and 
theological and religious principles. In order to keep 
the higher schools of learning as pure as possible, he 
insisted on care and watchfulness to be exercised by the 
heads of the institutions. In his letter to the King of 
England, he writes on this point: "As the schools con- 
tain the seeds of the ministry there is much need to keep 
them pure and thoroughly free from all ill w r eeds. I 
speak thus, Sire, because in your universities, it is com- 
monly said, there are many young people supported by 
the college treasury, who, instead of giving good hope of 
service in the church, rather show an inclination to do 
mischief, and to ruin it, not even concealing that they 
are opposed to true religion." 

Above all, Calvin w T as greatly concerned about the 
religious education of the young people. The "Cate- 
chism for Children" was published in 1537 and was 
meant to give expression to a simple piety rather than 



CALVIN. THE EDUCATOR. 



135 



to exhibit a profound knowledge of religious truths. 
But, as Calvin himself later felt, it was too theological 
for children, and was superseded by his second cate- 
chism, published immediately after his return to Geneva, 
in 1541. It is divided into portions for fifty-five Sun- 
days. "While Luther's Catechism is more child-like, this 
little work of Calvin is better adapted to all classes of 
people on account of its order and the progress of its 
ideas. 

The words of Calvin on the importance of catechisa- 
tion, which we found in a letter to Duke Somerset, ought 
to be weighed by every minister of the Reformed and 
Presbyterian churches in America, at a time when all 
kinds of new and questionable methods are being put in 
operation to propagate the faith, while the natural, time- 
honored and highly efficient method, the catechisation of 
the youth, is fast becoming a lost art. In this remarkable 
letter, Calvin says: "Believe me, Monsigneur, the Church 
of God ivill never preserve itself without a Catechism, for 
it is like the seed to keep the good grain from dying out 
and causing it to multiply from age to age. And, there- 
fore, if you desire to build an edifice w T hich shall be of 
long duration, and which shall not soon fall into decay, 
make provision for the children being instructed in a 
good catechism, which may show them briefly, and in 
language suited to their tender age, wherein true Chris- 
tianity consists. This catechism will serve two purposes, 
to wit, as an introduction to the whole people, so that 
every one may profit from what shall be preached and 
also to enable them to discern when any presumptuous 
person puts forward strange doctrines." 



CHAPTER XXII. 



CALVIN, THE STATESMAN. 

Calvin was as great a statesman as he was a theo- 
logian. It will be remembered that at some period of 
his life he studied law under the famous jurist Al- 
ciatus, at Orleans. This fact, the general training of 
his mind and the necessities of the conditions at Geneva, 
made him a politician in the good sense of the word. 
The public archives of Geneva contain many files of law 
papers with marginal notes by his hand. In legal cases 
his sagacity and his legal knowledge are admirable. 
Very often he became the diplomatist for his city and 
was entrusted with negotiations to foreign governments. 
On the legislation of Geneva, he exercised, as we have 
seen in a previous chapter, a twofold influence, direct 
and indirect. He established the code of morals which 
was a new creation and revised the general laws of the 
state. He thus became, not by any effort of his own, but 
by the great respect entertained for him, the virtual 
legislator of the city. An examination of the Genevan 
code of laws shows the strong influence of the Mosaic 
legislation on Calvin's conception of a well-ordered com- 
munity. As Kampschulte, the Eoman Catholic biogra- 
pher of Calvin says: "Both the special statutes and the 
general theocratic character of the Hebrew common- 
wealth were never out of sight. ' ' 

Dr. Schaff writes: "The material prosperity of the 
city was not neglected. Greater cleanliness was intro- 
duced, which is next to godliness, and promotes it. Cal- 
vin insisted on the removal of all filth from the houses 
and the narrow and crooked streets. He induced the 

136 



CALVIN, THE STATESMAN. 



137 



magistracy to superintend the markets, and to prevent 
the sale of unhealthy food, which was to be cast into the 
Rhone. Low taverns and drinking shops were abolished, 
and intemperance diminished. Mendicancy on the 
streets was prohibited. A hospital and poor-house was 
provided and well conducted. Efforts were made to 
give useful employment to every man that could work. 
Calvin urged the Council in a long speech, Dec. 29, 1544, 
to introduce the cloth and silk industry, and two months 
afterwards he presented a detailed plan, in which he 
recommended to lend to the Syndic, Jean Ami Curtet, 
a sufficient sum from the public treasury for starting 
the enterprise. The factories were forthwith established 
and soon reached the highest degree of prosperity. The 
cloth and silk of Geneva were highly prized in Switzer- 
land and France, and laid the foundation for the tem- 
poral wealth of the city. When Lyons, by the patron- 
age of the French crown, surpassed the little Republic 
in the manufacture of silk, Geneva had already begun 
to make up for the loss by the manufacture of watches 
and retained the mastery of this useful industry until 
1885, when American machinery produced a successful 
rivalry.' ' 

Even the minutest affairs, details curious and strange, 
engaged his attention. Regulations for watching of the 
gates, and for the suppression of fires are found in his 
handwriting. A Robert Stephens consults him on 
printing and later confesses himself indebted for his 
reputation as a printer to Calvin 's advice. The Council 
sent people who requested to open a new trade to speak 
to "M. Calvin,' 9 to show him his wares, and to work 
under his eyes. One day, a surgeon comes and the 
Council wishes Calvin to be present at his examination, 
Another day it is a dentist, whose art is new, for hitherto 



138 



JOHN CALVIN. 



men had only been drawers of teeth, but this man an- 
nounces himself as taking care of and repairing them. 
He is sent to "Monsieur Calvin/' and the reformer puts 
himself into the stranger 's skillful hands, and afterwards 
commends him to the magistrates. 

In his theory of government, Calvin was a thorough- 
going RerAiblican ; but he did not identify republicanism 
with broad democracy in the literal sense of the term — 
the direct rule of all the people. In Church and State, 
he believed in a government by well-qualified representa- 
tives of the people. In his "Institutes" he writes with 
reference to this subject as follows: "Indeed, if these 
three forms of government, which are stated by the 
philosophers be considered in themselves, I shall by no 
means deny that either aristocracy or a mixture of aris- 
trocracy and democracy far excels all others, and that, 
indeed, not of itself, but because it very rarely happens 
that kings regulate themselves so that their will is never 
at variance with justice and ^rectitude, or, in the next 
place, that they are endued with such penetration and 
prudence as in all cases to discover what is best.*"The 
vice or imperfections of men, therefore, renders it safer 
and more tolerable for the government to be in the hands 
of many, that they may ■ afford each other mutual as- 
sistance and admonition, and that if any one arrogate 
to himself more than is right the many may act as cen- 
sors and masters to restrain his ambition. This has al- 
ways been proved by experience, and the Lord con- 
firmed it by his authority when He established a govern- 
ment of this kind among the people of Israel with a view 
to preserve them in the most desirable condition till ex- 
hibited in David a type of Christ. And as I readily 
acknowledge that no kind of government is more happy 
than this, where liberty is regulated with becoming mod- 
eration and properly established on a durable basis, so 



CALVIN, THE STATESMAN. 



139 



also I consider these as the most happy people who are 
permitted to enjoy such a condition; and if they exert 
their strenuous and consistent efforts for its preserva- 
tion, I admit that they act in perfect consistence with 
their duty.' 7 

The effects of Calvin's Christian statesmanship on 
Geneva are the best answers to all charges of the enemy. 
Dr. Schaff writes: "Calvin found the commonwealth of 
Geneva in a condition of license bordering on anarchy; 
he left it a well-regulated community. If ever in this 
wicked world the ideal of Christian society can be real- 
ized in a civil community with a mixed population, it 
was in Geneva from the middle of the sixteenth to the 
middle of the eighteenth century, when the infidel genius 
of Rousseau (a native of Geneva) and of Voltaire (who 
resided twenty years in its neighborhood) began to 
destroy the influence of the reformer." Another his- 
torian, and he prejudiced, says: "After the lapse of 
ages, the effects of Calvin's influence are still visible in 
the industry and intellectual tone of Geneva." From 
having been a small and unimportant town, a sink of 
iniquity beyond any of the cities of northern Europe, the 
city on the Rhone became the focus of light, the center 
of attraction and the source of incalculable influence 
upon the destinies of Europe and the world. Even a - 
man like Rousseau says: "Those who regard Calvin as 
a mere theologian are ill acquainted with the extent of 
his genius. The preparation of our wise edicts, in which 
he had a great part, does him as much honor as his 
"Institutes." "Whatever revolution time may effect in 
our worship, while the love of country and liberty shall 
exist among us, the memory of that great man shall 
never cease to be blest. ' ' 

The historian Bancroft corroborates Rousseau's esti- 
mate : 6 6 We, as republicans, should remember that Calvin 



140 



JOHN CALVIN. 



was not only the founder of a sect, but foremost among 
the most efficient of modern republican legislators. 
More truly benevolent to the human race than Solon, 
more self-denying than Lycurgus, the genius of Calvin 
infused enduring elements into the institutions of Gen- 
eva and made it for the modern world the impregnable 
fortress of popular liberty, the fertile seed-plot of 
democracy. ' 7 

Altogether Geneva owes her moral and temporal pros- 
perity, her intellectual and literary activity, her social 
refinement, and her world-wide fame very largely to the 
reformation and discipline of Calvin. 

Let us listen to some testimonies of visitors who saw 
with their own eyes the changes wrought in Geneva 
through Calvin's influence. William Farel, who knew 
better than any other man the state of Geneva under 
Roman Catholic rule, and during the early stages of 
reform before the arrival of Calvin, visited the city 
again in 1557, and wrote to Ambrosius Blauer that he 
would gladly listen and learn there with the humblest of 
the people, and that "he would rather be the last in 
Geneva than the first anywhere else." John Knox, the 
Reformer* of Scotland, who studied several years in 
Geneva as a pupil of Calvin (though five years his 
senior), and as pastor of the English congregation, wrote 
to his friend Locke, in 1556: "In my heart I could 
have wished, yea, I cannot cease to wish, that it might 
please God to guide and conduct yourself to this place 
where, I neither fear nor am ashamed to say, is the 
most perfect school of Christ that ever was in the earth 
since the days of the Apostles. In other places I confess 
Christ to be truly preached; but manners and religion 
to be so seriously reformed, I have not yet seen in any 
other place besides." 



CALVIN, THE STATESMAN. 



141 



Dr. Valentine Andreae visited Geneva in 1610, nearly 
fifty years after Calvin's death, with the prejudices of 
an orthodox Lutheran against Calvinism, and was as- 
tonished to find in that city a state of religion which 
came nearer to his ideal of a Christocracy than any 
community he had seen in his extensive travels, and even 
in his German fatherland. "When I was in Geneva," 
he writes, "I observed something great which I shall 
remember and desire as long as I live. There is in that 
place not only the perfect institute of a perfect republic, 
but as a special ornament, a moral discipline, which 
makes weekly investigations into the conduct, and even 
the smallest transgressions of the citzens, first through 
the district inspectors, then through the seniors, and 
finally through the magistrates, as the nature of the of- 
fense and the hardened state of the offender may require. 
All cursing, swearing, gambling, luxury, strife, hatred, 
fraud, etc., are forbidden, while greater sins are hardly 
heard of. "What a glorious ornament of the Christian 
religion is such a purity of morals! We must lament 
with tears that it is wanting with us, and almost totally 
neglected. If it were not for the difference of religion, 
I would have forever been chained to that place by the 
agreement in morals, and I have ever since tried to in- 
troduce something like it into our churches. No less 
distinguished than the public discipline was the domestic 
discipline of my landlord, Scarron, with its daily devo- 
tions, reading of the Scriptures, the fear of God in word 
and deed, temperance in meat and drink and dress. I 
have not found greater purity of morals even in my 
father's home." 

A stronger and more impartial testimony of the deep 
and lasting effect of Calvin's discipline so long after his 
death could hardly be imagined. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 



CALVIN, THE PROMOTER OF CHURCH UNION. 

"When Calvin appeared on the scene of the Reforma- 
tion, it resembled a great battlefield. Everything was 
distracted and torn up, the wounded lay right and left ; 
the first engagement had already been gloriously won 
by Luther and Zwingli, but, alas, for want of better 
things to do, these two generals and their followers 
pointed the sword against each other, to the great joy 
of the common enemy. Luther gave the signal for this 
war between brethren by rejecting Zwingli ? s out- 
stretched hand of fellowship at Marburg in 1529. Deep- 
ly grieved by these conditions, Calvin, during his entire 
ministry, spent much time in trying to bring the differ- 
ent Protestant bodies to a realization of their substan- 
tial unity in faith and love. 

Like Luther, Calvin had no faith in the practicable- 
ness of a compromise with the Catholics, and the nego- 
tiations at which he was present at "Worms, Hanau, 
Frankfurt and Ratisbon became more and more irk- 
some to him, the more so, as his ignorance of the German 
occasioned him some embarrassment. As often as the 
Emperor was in trouble and needed the Protestants in 
his wars against the Turk, or France, or the Pope him- 
self, he proposed what is called an "Interim," that is, 
a temporary arrangement, to the Protestants, promising 
them final settlement by a General Council. The very 
worst of these was the "Leipsic Interim," in which Me- 
]ancthon, true to his constitutional weakness, surren- 
dered almost the entire Protestant principle. To this 
compromise in particular Calvin was inflexibly opposed, 

142 



CALVIN, THE PROMOTER OP CHURCH UNION. 143 

and a sharp correspondence between himself and Me- 
lancthon ensued. 

The reformer's desire was to consolidate Protestant- 
ism. It is refreshing to listen to some of Calvin's beau- 
tiful sentiments in favor of church union. In a letter 
to Bullinger, March 12, 1540, he writes: "What, dear 
Bullinger, should more anxiously occupy us in our 
letters, than the endeavor to keep up brotherly friend- 
ship among us by all possible means. It is important 
for the whole church that all should keep together to 
whom the Lord has committed the affairs in His church. 
It is, therefore, our duty to cherish a true friendship 
for all preachers of the Word, and to keep the churches 
at peace with each other. As far as in me lies, I will 
always labor to do so. I wish that something might 
occur which would afford me the opportunity of discus- 
sing the whole matter with you in a friendly manner, 
face to face. I have never been able to treat this matter 
with you by word of mouth. I beseech you, or rather 
conjure you, dear Bullinger, to let us wholly refrain 
from all hate and all strife, and even from all appear- 
ance of offense. Do not think that I have any doubt 
of your resolution. It is the peculiarity of love, that 
even when there is hope there is yet much of anxiety. 
Farewell, learned and pious man." 

On M^trch 20, 1552, Cranmer, Archbishop of Canter- 
bury, and head of the reforming party in England, in- 
viting Calvin, with Melancthon and Bullinger to a meet- 
ing in Lambeth Palace, London, for the purpose of draw- 
ing up a consensus creed for the Reformed churches, 
wrote him the following significant words: "As noth- 
ing tends more injuriously to the separation of the 
churches than heresies and disputes respecting the doc- 
trines of religion, so nothing tends more effectually to 



144 



JOHN CALVIN. 



unite the Churches of God, and more powerfully to de- 
fend the fold of Christ than the pure teaching of the 
Gospel and harmony of doctrine. Wherefore I have 
often wished, and still continue to do so, that learned 
and godly men, who are eminent for erudition and judg- 
ment, might meet together, and, comparing their respec- 
tive opinions, might handle all the heads of ecclesiastical 
doctrine, and hand down to posterity, under the weight 
of their authority, some work not only upon the subjects 
themselves, but upon the forms of expressing them. 
Our adversaries are now holding their councils at Trent, 
for the establishment of their errors; and shall we 
neglect to call together a godly synod, for the refutation 
of error, and for restoring and propagating the truth ? ' ' 
With great joy Calvin seconded the desires so nobly 
expressed by Cranmer, which harmonized so well with 
the most elevated sentiments of his own heart. In 
April, 1552, the former wrote his famous letter on the 
importance of church union in reply to Cranmer 's 
letter, in which he says : 6 6 In the present distracted state 
of the church, you suppose that no better means can 
be employed than that pious, sensible men, brought up 
in the school of God, should unite in setting forth a 
common confession of Christian doctrine. Satan seeks 
by manifold wiles to extinguish the light of the Gospel. 
The dogs in the pay of the Pope cease not to lark, that 
they may drown the voices of those who preach the 
word of truth. Such is the madness, such tha impiety 
which everywhere prevails, that religion can hardly 
any longer be protected from daily mockery. Nor is 
this state of feeling confined to the people alone. Still 
more lamentable to say, it is extending among the clergy. 
But the Lord Himself will communicate to as the unity 
of the true faith, in some wonderful manner, and by 



CALVIN, THE PROMOTER OP CHURCH UNION. 145 

means altogether unknown to us. ' ' Calvin expressed the 
wish that Cranmer would appoint some place in Eng- 
land where the heads of all the Protestant churches 
might meet, to lay the foundation of a permanent union. 
"One of the greatest evils of our time," he says, "is 
that the churches are so widely separated from each 
other. The body of Christ is torn asunder because the 
members are separated. As far as I am concerned, if I 
can be of any use, I will readily cross ten seas to effect 
the object in view. If the welfare of England alone 
were concerned, I should regard it as sufficient reason 
to act thus. But when our purpose is to unite the senti- 
ments of all good and learned men, neither labor nor 
trouble of any kind ought to be spared." Cranmer 
adopted Calvin's idea, as far as possible, and Calvin, 
in his joy, writes him again : ' 1 Beware that you may not 
have to charge yourself with many grievous accusations, 
if, through negligence or delay, you leave the world in 
its present distracted state. Besides the waste of church 
property, which is wicked enough, the public income 
of the church is employed to support idle fellows en- 
gaged to sing vespers in a foreign language. The diffi- 
culties with which you have to contend are so numerous 
that it may not be useless on my part to excite your 
resolution." This whole project was defeated, how- 
ever, by the death of the king and the martyrdom of 
Cranmer. 

Calvin laid the main stress not so much on external 
consolidation as on union in the spirit. The close con- 
nection between Church and State in all Protestant coun- 
tries excluded all ideas of organic or absorptive union. 
His extensive correspondence with Bullinger, Melanc- 
thon, Chanmer and others amply proves this. He even 
wrote a letter on this subject to Luther, which, how- 
ever, did not reach the great reformer because Melanc- 



146 



JOHN CALVIN. 



than, true to his constitutional timidity, was afraid to 
deliver it, as it might exasperate Luther, who was then 
engaged in one of his controversies on the Lord's Supper 
with the German churches in Switzerland. 

Calvin's idea of union being far from the idea of 
governmental unification was also far from requiring 
sameness in detail of doctrine. This traditional 
"intolerant" reformer was willing to compromise 
in every direction on matters of order, dis- 
cipline, ceremonies and forms in order to heal schism, 
disunion and alienation in the Eeformed churches. 
''Keep your smaller differences," says he, addressing 
the Lutheran churches, "but let us have no discord on 
that account, but let us march in one solid column 
under the banner of the Captain of our salvation. Let 
the ministers by whom God permits the church to be 
governed be what they may," he writes to Farel; "if 
the signs of the true church are perceived, it will be 
better not to separate from their communion. Nor is it 
an objection that some impure doctrines are then de- 
livered, for there is scarce any church which retains 
none of the remains of ignorance. It is sufficient for 
us that the doctrine in which the church of Christ is 
founded should hold its place and influence. ' ' This and 
other expressions of Calvin's liberal spirit have led to 
the absurd assertion that he was the friend and de- 
fender of the episcopal form of government. In the 
same spirit of liberality and in a desire for union, he 
signed the Augsburg Confession, for substance of doc- 
trine only, and not endorsing its doctrine of the Lord's 
Supper. 

Calvin achieved many and various results favorable to 
union. The Consensus Tigurinus (Zurich Confession 
of Faith) practically united all the Swiss churches. 
After Luther's death, with the help of Melancthon, he 



CALVIN, THE PROMOTER OF CHURCH UNION. 147 



expected a closer union between Germany and Switzer- 
land. But the heated controversy with the Lutheran 
preacher Westphal in Hamburg interfered and made 
progress in that direction impossible. 

The spirit of Calvin desiring union of the churches 
has always rested upon the churches professing the 
Reformed faith. The famous Synod of Dor, in Hol- 
land, was one of the most conspicuous efforts to unify 
the Reformed churches. It held 154 sessions from Nov. 
13, 1618, to May 9, 1619. There were present eighty- 
four theologians and eighteen lay commissioners, twenty- 
eight of whom representing the Reformed churches of 
England, Scotland, Palatinate, Hesse, Switzerland and 
Bremen, the rest being Hollanders. Delegates were 
appointed by the National Synod of France, but the 
French king refused them permission to go. Bran- 
denburg (Prussia) also elected delegates, but they failed 
to appear. The Heidelberg Catechism and the Belgic 
Confession were unanimously adopted as standards of 
Reformed orthodoxy, to which were added the Five 
Articles of Dor. When the English and Scotch dele- 
gates returned home they reported that the Reformed 
people on the continent had in the Heidelberg Catechism 
a book "the leaves of which were worth their weight in 
gold." 

Almost every effort at union in modern times has 
commenced within the Reformed Church, be it the 
union promoted by the Reformed king of Prussia, be- 
tween Lutherans and Reformed, in the year 1817, or a 
similar union in the Palatinate, Baden and Hesse, in 
the year 1818. 

In the last quarter of the past century another dream 
of Calvin was realized. In 1875 the "Alliance of the 
Reformed churches throughout the world holding the 



148 



JOHN CALVIN. 



Presbyterian System" was organized in London, Eng- 
land. This body meets every four years in a council 
composed of regularly appointed delegates representing 
every branch of the Reformed Church. It has held eight 
General Councils. The first Council was held in Edin- 
burgh, Scotland, in 1877 ; the second at Philadelphia, 
U. S., in 1880; the third at Belfast, Ireland, in 1884; 
the fourth at London, England, in 1888 ; the fifth at 
Toronto, Canada, in 1892 ; the sixth at Glasgow, Scot- 
land, 1896; the seventh at Washington, D. C, in 1899; 
the eighth at Liverpool, England, in 1904 ; and the ninth 
Council will meet in New York City in 1909. The 
churches connected with the Alliance number more than 
ninety, and are located on all the five continents. The 
adherents of the Presbyterian and Reformed Churches 
in the world number about 25,000,000. (For definite 
statistics, consult the last chapter of this book.) 

The prime movers, and some of the foremost leaders 
in "The Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in 
America, " which met in Philadelphia, Pa., in December, 
1908, representing thirty-one denominations and eigh- 
teen million members, were also members of Reformed 
churches. A much older organization of the same char- 
acter, but still more extensive, "The Evangelical Al- 
liance," is being supported by no one more heartily 
than by the followers of Calvin. 



C H A P T B E XXIV. 
WHAT IS CALVINISM? 

Having sketched the life, character and various activi- 
ties of Calvin, we are prepared to discuss more at length 
his doctrine and the influence of it on the world. In 
some Catholic countries, like Hungary and France, and 
by some unfriendly authors the name of Calvin has 
been attached to the adherents of the system of which 
he is the foremost expounder. They are spoken of as 
" Calvinists, ' ' and this unofficial designation used by 
the enemies of the reformer is meant to be a stigma 
and is so understood by his friends and therefore strenu- 
ously rejected. True, the names "Lutherans" and 
"Protestants" also originated as names of derision, 
coined by the enemy, and Luther vehemently objected 
to having his name attached to any portion of the 
Church of Christ ; but in the course of time both of these 
names were accepted by the opponents of Rome and 
soon became names of honor and distinction, the one 
for a denomination and the other the common name for 
all who oppose Romanism without distinction of de- 
nomination or nationality. The name " Calvinist, ' ' 
however, has never been accepted as the official name of 
a church with the exception of a small number of White- 
field Methodists in "Wales, who have assumed officially 
the name of "Calvinistic Methodists," to distinguish 
themselves from the great body of Methodists which is 
Arminian in doctrine and episcopal in government. At 
present the official names of the followers of Calvin 
are "Reformed" and "Presbyterian." The first is the 
older name and is still borne by the "Calvinists" in Ger- 
many, Switzerland, Holland, France, Hungary, Bo- 

149 



150 



JOHN CALVIN. 



hernia, South Africa and America, as a name distinguish- 
ing them from the Lutheran churches and other denomi- 
nations. The name "Reformed" in the titles of those 
churches has therefore no reference whatever to modern 
reforms, as "Ref. Presbyterian, " or "Ref. Episcopa- 
lian," or "Ref. Methodist," or "Kef. Lutheran," but 
refers simply and solely to the great reformation in the 
sixteenth century. Originally also the Protestant 
churches in Great Britain called themselves "Reform- 
ed, ' ' and even to this very day that name is retained in 
the crown-oath of the English king, which pledges him 
to "defend the Reformed religion of the realm." But 
when, under Elizabeth, the Stuarts and the common- 
wealth, the tremendous three-cornered struggle for a 
Scriptural form of church government arose, the com- 
mon name referring to their faith was forgotten and 
the three parties became known by the names of the 
church government which each one favored; those who 
believed in government by a bishop, as "Episcopalian," 
from the Greek word episcopos, an overseer; those who 
believed in the government by elders, as representatives 
of the church, as ' i Presbyterians, ' ' from the Greek word 
presbyteros, an elder; and those who believed that each 
local church should govern itself independently of the 
sister churches, as " Congregationalists. " This explains 
how it came that the churches of Great Britain profess- 
ing the Reformed faith dropped the common family 
name and called themselves "Presbyterians." As a 
matter of fact and actual usage, the intelligent members 
of the English-speaking Calvinists employ both names; 
when speaking of their faith, they still call it 1 1 Reform- 
ed," and when speaking of their form of government 
they define it as "Presbyterian." Using the adjectives; 
with precision, therefore. "Reformed" refers to the 
faith, " Presbyterial " to the form of government, and 



WHAT IS CALVINISM ? 



151 



" Presbyterian ' ' to the denominations known by that 
name. So when, in 1902, the General Assembly of the 
Northern Presbyterian Church issued explanatory ar- 
ticles of their doctrinal standards, the title read : ' ' Brief 
Statement of the Reformed Faith.' ' Both names have 
been very cleverly worked into the official title of the 
world-wide organization, known as "Alliance of the 
Reformed Churches holding the Presbyterian System." 

While strenuously opposing the use of Calvin's name 
in the official titles of the churches, the honored name 
of the reformer has, however, tenaciously and with ap- 
probation, clung to his famous system, so that to-day 
friend and foe use the term "Calvinism," either to de- 

4 

note his system of doctrine in general or to express 
the scientific aspect and value of the great principles 
contained in the system. Many people, it is true, when 
they hear the name of Calvin and Calvinism think at 
once of predestination, or the burning of Servetus. This 
confusion is due either to ignorance or prejudice. For 
predestination was not at all a doctrine peculiar to 
Calvin, Luther and Zwingli being as strenuous uphold- 
ers of this doctrine as Calvin, although in the latter 's 
system it may occupy a more important position, while 
the spreading of heresy was, as has been shown, at the 
time of the reformation, deemed worthy of death by 
everybody, including Servetus himself, 

Speaking more precisely, by Calvinism is meant that 
system of doctrine, that form of government and those 
ideas of public worship which in their general principles 
are common to all the branches of the great family of 
Reformed and Presbyterian churches scattered over the 
entire globe, and found in Switzerland, Germany, 
France, Holland, Scotland, England, Ireland, Hungary, 
Bohemia, South Africa, North America and on many 



152 



JOHN CALVIN. 



foreign mission fields. It denotes a type of doctrine 
as distinguished from the Greek, Roman and Lutheran 
systems. It finds its formal expression in the great Re- 
formed creeds, culminating in the Heidelberg Catechism 
in 1563 ; the Articles of Dor, 1619, and the Westminstei 
Standards, 1647, which therefore contain the ripest fr7 it 
of Reformed Protestantism in Germany, Holland and 
Great Britain. This world-wide extension impresses 
upon Calvinism the character of true catholicity, for it 
is at least as widely extended as Romanism, and is not 
confined practically to one race as Lutheranism, nor to 
one language, as Episcopalianism, to say nothing of the 
genuine catholicity of doctrine and spirit. The outward 
and visible bond of its inward unity Calvinism has found 
in the "Alliance of Reformed Churches throughout the 
World holding the Presbyterial System. ' ' 

It must be understood, however, that the principles 
embraced by these churches existed previous to the 
appearance of Calvin and were adopted and not origi- 
nated by him. His doctrinal system may be traced 
through Augustine (died 430) back to Paul; the prin- 
ciples of his form of church government are clearly 
taught in the New Testament and were practiced by the 
Waldenses and the old Moravians before the Reforma- 
tion. Lambert introduced the Presbyterial form of gov- 
ernment in Hesse as early as 1527, long before Calvin's 
conversion, and Bucer did the same in Strasburg in 
1531 ; the leading ideas of his form of worship, Calvin 
developed from the scanty description of primitive wor- 
ship as found in Justin Martyn's First Apology, written 
in the second century, and from the liturgy used in 
the churches of Strasburg. Calvin, however, being "the 
theologian" and organizer among the reformers, so 
clearly expounded, so perfectly systematized and so 



WHAT IS CALVINISM? 



153 



ably defended these principles as to connect with them 
forever his illustrious name. 

The general principles of Calvinism, "generic Calvin- 
ism," as it is sometimes called, have given rise to a va- 
riety of types of Calvinism. Just as the Christian life 
common to all believers has found various expressions in 
different men and nationalities, so that we may truly 
speak of the Petrine, the Pauline, and the Johannine 
type of teaching, and of Jewish, Greek, Latin, German, 
English and American, as well as of Reformed, Lu- 
theran and Methodist Christianity, so also Calvinism, 
while moulding the life of individuals and nations has, 
in turn, been moulded by the different varieties of soil 
in which it was planted, by the peculiarities of men and 
nations who embraced the system. To begin with, there 
is the Calvinism of Calvin himself. In Germany the 
same general system appears in a milder form in the 
Heidelberg Catechism, which, while genuinely Calvin- 
istic, avoids all the sharp angles of that system. In Hol- 
land, England and Scotland, it has been modified in 
form by the "Federal Scheme," introduced by Coc- 
ceius and the Westminster Divines. In America it 
has undergone more radical transformation through the 
speculation of the New England Puritans, Hopkins, Ed- 
wards, Emmons, N. W. Taylor and others. Intelligent 
readers should, therefore, remember that many objec- 
tions to Calvinism do not apply to the theology of Calvin 
himself, but either to an unintelligent caricature of it 
which fails to rise to Calvin's own point of view, or to 
one of the later developed types of Calvinism. 

As this is a biography of Calvin and not a history 
of doctrinal Calvinism we confine ourselves to a brief 
statement of his teaching as found in his "Institutes," 



154 



JOHN CALVIN. 



On Sin. — Man as a sinner is guilty and corrupt. The 
first man was made in the image and likeness of God, 
which not only implies man's superiority to all other 
creatures, but indicates his original purity, integrity and 
sanctity. From this state Adam fell, and in his fall 
involved the whole human race descended from him. 
Hence, depravity and corruption diffused through all 
parts of the soul, attach to all men, and this first makes 
them obnoxious to the anger of God, and then comes 
forth in works, which the Scripture calls works of the 
flesh. (Gal. 5 : 19.) Thus all are held vitiated and per- 
verted in all parts of their nature, and on account of 
such corruption deservedly condemned before God, by 
whom nothing is accepted save righteousness, innocence 
and purity. Nor does that mean that we are being 
bound for another 's offense ; for when it is said that we, 
through Adam's sin, have become obnoxious to the di- 
vine judgment, it is not to be taken as if we, being our- 
selves innocent and blameless, bear the fault of his of- 
fense, but that, we having been brought under a curse 
through his transgression, he is said to have bound us. 
From him, however, not only has punishment over- 
taken us, but a pestilence instilled from him resides in 
us, to which punishment is justly due. 

2. Redemption. To redeem man from this state of 
guilt, and to recover him from corruption, the Son of 
God became incarnate, assuming man's nature into 
union with his own, so that in him there are two natures 
in one person. Thus incarnate, he took on him the of- 
fices of Prophet, Priest and King, and by His humilia- 
tion, obedience and suffering unto death, followed by 
His resurrection and ascension to heaven, he has per- 
fected His work and fulfilled all that was required in 
a Redeemer of men, so that it is truly affirmed that He 



WHAT IS CALVINISM? 



155 



has merited for man the grace of salvation. (Bk. II, 
eh. 13-17.) 

3. Salvation. — But until a man is in some way really 
•mited to Christ, so as to partake of Him, the benefits of 
Christ's work cannot be attained by him. Now it is by 
the secret and special operation of the Holy Spirit that 
men are united to Christ, and made members of His 
body. Through faith, which is a firm and certain cog- 
nition of the divine benevolence toward us, founded on 
the truth of the gracious promise in Christ, men are, 
by the operation of the Spirit, united to Christ, and 
are made partakers of His death and resurrection, so 
that the old man is crucified with Him, and they are 
raised to a new life, a life of righteousness and holiness. 
Thus joined to Christ the believer has life in Him, and 
knows that He is saved, having the witness of the Spirit 
that he is a child of God, and having the promises, the 
certitude of which the Spirit had before impressed upon 
his mind, sealed by the same Spirit on the heart. (Bk. 
II, ch. 33-36.) From faith proceeds repentance, which 
is the turning of our life to God, proceeding from a sin- 
cere and earnest fear of God, and consisting in the mor- 
tification of the flesh and the old man within us, and a 
vivification of the Spirit. Through faith, also, the be- 
liever receives justification, his sins are forgiven, he is 
accepted of God and is held by him as righteous, the 
righteousness of Christ being imputed to him, and faith 
being the instrument by which man lays hold on Christ, 
so that, with His righteousness, the man appears in 
God's sight as righteous. This imputed righteousness, 
however, is not disjoined from real personal righteous- 
ness, for regeneration and sanctification come to the be- 
liever from Christ no less than justification; the two 



156 



JOHN CALVIN. 



blessings are not to be confounded, but neither are they 
to be disjoined. 

4. Election. — The assurance which the believer has of 
salvation he receives from the operation and witness of 
the Holy Spirit ; but this again rests on the divine choice 
of the man to salvation; and this falls back on God's 
eternal sovereign purpose, whereby He has predestinated 
some to eternal life, while the rest of mankind are passed 
over for their sin. Those whom God has chosen to life 
He effectually calls to salvation, and they are kept by 
Him in progressive faith and holiness unto the end. 
(Bk. Ill, passim.) 

5. Means of Grace. — The external means or aids by 
which God unites men into the fellowship of Christ, 
and sustains and advances those who believe, are the 
church and its ordinances, especially the sacraments. 
The church universal is the multitude gathered from 
diverse nations, which, though divided by distance of 
time and place, agree in one common faith, and it is 
bounded by the tie of the same religion: and wherever 
the word of God is sincerely preached, and the sacra- 
ments are duly administered, according to Christ's in- 
stitute, there, beyond doubt, is a church of the living 
God. (Bk. IV, ch. 1, sec. 7-11.) 

6. Church Officers. — The permanent officers in the 
church are pastors and teachers, to the former of whom 
it belongs, to preside over the discipline of the church, 
to administer the sacraments, and to admonish and ex- 
hort the members, while the latter occupy themselves 
with the exposition of Scripture, so that pure and 
wholesome doctrine may be retained. With them are to 
be joined, for the government of the church, certain 
pious, grave and holy men, as a senate in each church; 
and to others, as deacons, is to be entrusted the care 



WHAT IS CALVINISM? 



157 



of the poor. The election of officers in a church is to 
be with the people, and those duly chosen and called are 
to be ordained by the laying on of the hands of the 
pastors. (Ch. 3, sec. 4-16.) 

7. Sacraments. — The sacraments are two — Baptism 
and the Lord's Supper. Baptism is the sign of initia- 
tion, whereby men are admitted into the society of the 
church, and, being grafted into Christ, are reckoned 
among the sons of God ; it serves both for the confirma- 
tion of faith and as a confession before men. The Lord's 
Supper is a spiritual feast, whereby Christ attests that 
He is the life-giving bread by which our souls are fed 
unto true and blessed immortality. That sacred com- 
munication of His flesh and blood whereby Christ trans- 
fuses into us His life, even as if it penetrated into our 
bones and marrow, He, in the Supper, attests and seals ; 
and that not by a vain or empty sign set before us, but 
there He puts forth the efficacy of His Spirit whereby 
He fulfills what He promises. In the mystery of the 
Supper, Christ is truly exhibited to us by the symbols 
of bread and wine, and so His body and blood, in which 
He fulfilled all obedience for the obtaining of righteous- 
ness for us are presented. There is no such presence 
of Christ in the Supper as that He is affixed to the 
bread, or included in it, or in any way circumscribed; 
but whatever can express the true and substantial com- 
munication of the body and blood of the Lord, which is 
exhibited to believers under the said symbols of the 
Supper, is to be received, and that not as perceived by 
the imagination only, or mental intelligence, but as en- 
joyed for the aliment of the eternal life. (Bk. IV, ch. 
15, 17.) 

Calvin's system, as will be seen in this outline, is the 
reflection of his great mind — severe, grand, logical, dar- 



158 



JOHN CALVIN. 



ing in the heights to which it ascends, yet humble in 
its constant reversion to the Bible as its basis. Mount- 
ing to the throne of God, the reformer reads everything 
in the light of the eternal Divine decree. 



CHAPTER XXV. 



CALVINISM AND CIVIL LIBERTY. 

This heading may seem to some to contain a contra- 
diction in terms, but only to those who misconstrue 
either or both terms. Many of the foremost historians, 
friends and foes, find no difficulty in harmonizing these 
two conceptions, because the facts of history are too 
plain. Let us consider the latter first and then at- 
tempt an explanation of these facts. 

It is a fact that all nations which embraced Calvinism 
to some extent have made the greatest strides in civil 
liberty. Buckle, not a friend of Calvin, says: "It is 
an interesting fact that the doctrines which in Eng- 
land are called Calvinistic have always been connected 
with a democratic spirit, while those of Arminianism 
have found most favor among the aristocratic party. In 
the republics of Switzerland, North America and Hol- 
land, Calvinism was always the popular creed. In that 
sharp retribution which followed the attempt to sup- 
press the liberties of the people of England by Charles I, 
the Puritans and Independents, by whom the king was 
beheaded, were, with scarcely an exception, Calvinists. 
The first open movement against King Charles pro- 
ceeded from Scotland, where the principles of Calvin 
had long been in the ascendant." Calvinism created 
also the Dutch Republic and made it "the first free na- 
tion to put a girdle of empire around the world. ' ' D 'Au- 
bigne and the American historian Motley have shown 
that, until Calvinism took possession of the Netherlands, 
the people made but little headway against Spain; but 
from that moment they never faltered for well-nigh a 

159 



160 



JOHN CALVIN. 



hundred years, until their independence was tri- 
umphantly established. Motley says: "It would cer- 
tainly be unjust and futile to detract from the vast debt 
which that republic owed to the Genevan church. ' ' The 
reformation had entered the Netherlands by the "Wal- 
loon gate (that is, through the Calvinists). The earliest 
and most eloquent preachers, the most impassioned con- 
verts, the sublimest martyrs, had lived, preached, fought, 
suffered and died with the precepts of Calvin in their 
hearts. 

Does any reader of history doubt that the seed 
thoughts of Calvinism sunk into the hearts of French- 
men by the Huguenots led also that nation, though it is 
to-day nominally Roman Catholic, to fight for and after 
several failures eventually to succeed in establishing 
a permanent republic? The same historian, Motley, 
writes: "Throughout the blood-stained soil of France, 
too, the men were fighting the same great battle as were 
the Netherlanders. The valiant cavaliers of Dauphiny 
and Provence knelt on the ground before the battle, smote 
their iron breasts with their mailed hands, uttered a 
Calvinistic prayer, sang a psalm of Marot, and then 
charged upon Guise under the white plume of the 
Bearnese. And it w T as on the Calvinistic weavers and 
clothiers of Rochelle that the Great Prince relied in the 
hour of danger. Thus to the Calvinists more than to 
any other class of men, the political liberties of Holland, 
England and America are due." 

The famous battle of the Boyne, in Ireland, in 1690, 
which decided the fate of Protestantism in the English- 
speaking world was won by an army, in which the whole 
Calvinistic world was represented — Calvinists from Eng- 
land, Ireland, Scotland, France, Germany, Finland, 
Sweden, Switzerland and even two hundred negro serv- 



CALVINISM AND CIVIL LIBERTY. 161 

ants of Calvinists flocked to the standards of William 
of Orange and his own staunch Hollanders. 

The fire which had consumed the last vestige of royal 
and sacerdotal despotism throughout the realm of Great 
Britain had been lighted by the hands of Calvinists. 
It was the illustrious Calvinist, William, Prince of 
Orange, who saved English liberty, a man who, as Ma- 
cauley says, found in the strong and sharp logic of the 
Genevan school something that suited his intellect and 
his temper, the keystone of whose religion was the doc- 
trine of predestination. As to the effect of William's 
victory, the most successful and the most splendid 
recorded in history, Macauley says: "It has been of all 
revolutions, the most beneficent; the highest eulogy that 
can be pronounced upon it is this, that it was England's 
best, and that, for the authority of law, for the security 
of property, for the peace of our streets, for the happi- 
ness of our homes, our gratitude is due, under Him who 
raises and pulls down nations at His pleasure, to the 
Long Parliament, to the Convention and to William of 
Orange." And David Hume's testimony to the worth 
of the Calvinistic Puritans is equally strong. "So ab- 
solute," he says, "was the authority of the crown that 
the precious spark of liberty had been kindled and was 
preserved by the Puritans alone, and it was to this sect 
that the English owe the whole freedom of their consti- 
tution." And Taine, referring to the Calvinists of 
Great Britain, says : 6 1 These men are the true heroes of 
England; they display, in high relief, the original char- 
acteristics and noblest features of England — practical 
piety, the rule of conscience, manly resolution, indomit- 
able energy. They founded England, in spite of the 
corruption of the Stuarts and the relaxation of modern 
manners, by exercise of duty, by the practice of justice, 



162 



JOHN CALVIN. 



by obstinate toil, by vindication of right, by resistance 
to oppression, by the conquest of liberty, by the re- 
pression of vice. They founded Scotland; they founded 
the United States; at this day they are, by the descend- 
ants, founding Australia and colonizing the world." 

The judgment of the historian Ranke that "John 
Calvin was virtually the founder of America," and of 
Bancroft, "he that will not honor the memory and 
respect the influence of Calvin knows but little of the 
origin of American independence" are well known. 
Their opinions are borne out by American history. 

The various bodies of Calvinists: Puritans, Presby- 
terians, German Palatines in Pennsylvania, the Dutch 
in New York and the Huguenots stood firm like a rock 
for American independence. The Germans are generally 
overlooked in this connection in American text-books, 
but history tells us plainly that they formed such a large 
and important element in the colonies that without their 
assistance in men and money it would have , been almost 
impossible to gain the final victory for independence. 
When the first rumblings of independence were heard. 
George III desired to know, first, how the Germans in 
the colonies stood, and, secondly, how many of them had 
been soldiers in the wars of Frederick the Great. When 
he heard the truth, his countenance fell. General Von 
Steuben, the German drillmaster of Washington's de- 
moralized army, was an elder in the Reformed Church 
at New York, where his Memorial Tablet may still be 
seen. 

Reader: study Calvinism in history in the books of 
disinterested historians like Motley, Froude, Bancroft. 
Ranke and others, before you purse up your lips again, 
when the name of Calvin is mentioned ! 



CALVINISM AND CIVIL LIBERTY. 



163 



The fact that Calvinism is favorable to popular lib- 
erty is also shown by the open or secret aversion of kings 
and princes and their mouthpieces against the system. 
James I of England, believing episcopacy to be the 
natural ally of the throne, and knowing from past ex- 
perience that he could not bend the Presbyterians to his 
will, devoted himself assiduously to the overthrow of 
Calvinism in Scotland. Charles I, the son of James, 
gave as the reason why his father had subverted the 
republican form of government of the Scottish church, 
that the Presbyterian and monarchical forms of govern- 
ment do not harmonize. "No bishop, no king!' 7 De 
Tocqueville, admitting the same, calls Calvinism, "a 
democratic and republican religion.' 7 Even in the last 
century, the Reformed king of Prussia, Frederic "Wil- 
liam IV, tried to inject episcopalianism into the church 
government of his realm, and had actually appointed 
one clergyman as "bishop." When the Rhenish and 
Westphalian Synods objected, he, in his anger, de- 
nounced them as- ' ' plebe jan synods " ( " Poebelsynode " ) . 
Only two months ago, in 1908, criticisms were heard 
directed towards the composition of the General Synod 
of the Prussian Church, as being a conclave of noble- 
men and royal appointees instead of a representation 
of the general community in the church. 

The fact that Calvinism is favorable to civil liberty 
having been proved by the unerring witness of history, 
the question arises, what is there in Calvinism leading to 
such a result? Let two American writers answer, 
neither of whom is overfriendly to Calvinism, Dr. Fisher 
and H. W. Beecher. "One reason," Fisher says, "lies 
in the boundary line which it drew between Church and 
State. Calvinism would not surrender the peculiar 
functions of the church to civil authority. Whether the 



164 



JOHN CALVIN. 



church, or the government should regulate the adminis- 
tration of the sacraments, and admit or reject communi- 
cants, was the question which Calvin fought out with the 
authorities at Geneva. In this feature, Calvinism dif- 
fered from the relation of the civil rulers to the church, 
as established under the auspices of Zwingli, as well as 
of Luther and from the Anglican system which orig- 
inated under Henry VIII. In its theory of the re- 
spective powers of the church, and of the magistrate, 
Calvinism approximated to the traditional view of the 
Catholic Church. In France, in Holland, in Scotland, 
in England, wherever Calvinism was planted, it had 
no scruples about resisting the tyranny of civil rulers. 
This principle, in the long run, would inevitably con- 
duce to the progress of civil freedom. It is certain that 
the distinction between Church and State, which was 
recognized from the conversion of Constantine, not- 
withstanding' the long ages of intolerance and persecu- 
tion that were to follow, was the first step, the necessary 
condition, in the development of religious liberty. First, 
it must be settled that the State shall not stretch its 
power over the Church, within its proper sphere; next, 
that the State shall not lend its power to the Church, as 
an executioner of ecclesiastical laws. 

A second reason why Calvinism has been favorable 
to civil liberty is found in the republican character of 
its church organization. Laymen shared power with 
ministers. The people, the body of the congregation, 
took an active and responsible part in the chain of 
clergy, and of all other officers. At Geneva, the alliance 
of the Church with civil authority, and the circum- 
stances in which Calvin was placed, reduced to a con- 
siderable extent the real power of the people in Church 
affairs. Calvin did not realize his own theory. But 



CALVINISM AND CIVIL LIBERTY. 



165 



elsewhere, especially in countries where Calvinism had 
to encounter the hostility of the State, the democratic 
tendencies of the system had full room for development. 
Men who were accustomed to rule themselves in the 
Church, would claim the same privilege in the common- 
wealth. 

Another source of the influence of Calvinism in ad- 
vancing the cause of civil liberty, had been derived 
from its theology. The sense of the exaltation of the 
Almighty Euler, and of His intimate connection with 
the minutest incidents and the obligations of human 
life, which is fostered by this theology, dwarfs all earthly 
potentates. An intense spirituality, a consciousness that 
this life is but an infinitesimal fraction of human ex- 
istence, dissipates the feeling of personal homage for 
men, however high their station, and dulls the lustre 
of earthly grandeur. Calvinism and Romanism are the 
antipodes of each other. Yet, it is curious to observe 
that the effect of these opposite systems upon the atti- 
tude of men towards the civil authority, has often been 
not dissimilar. But the Calvinist, unlike the Romanist, 
dispenses with the human priesthood, w r hich has not 
only often proved a powerful direct auxiliary to tem- 
poral rulers, but has educated the sentiments to a habit 
of subjection, which renders submission to such rulers 
more facile, and less easy to shake off." 

In a similar strain the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher 
says: "It has ever been a mystery to the so-called lib- 
erals, that the Calvinists, with what they have consid- 
ered their harshly despotic and rigid view and doctrines, 
should always have been the staunchest and bravest de- 
fenders of freedom. The working for liberty of these 
severe principles in the minds of those that adopted 
them has been a puzzle. But the truth lies here: Cal- 



166 



JOHN CALVIN. 



vinism has done what no other religion has ever been 
able to do: It presents the highest human ideal to the 
world, and sweeps the whole road to destruction with 
the most appalling battery that can be imagined. 

"It intensifies, beyond all example, the individuality 
of man, and shows in a clear and overpowering light, 
his responsibility to God and his relations to eternity. 
It points out man as entering life under the weight of a 
tremendous responsibility having, on his march toward 
the grave, this one sole solace — of securing heaven and 
of escaping hell. 

"Thus the Calvinist sees man pressed, burdened, 
urged on, by the most mighty influencing forces. He 
is on the march for eternity, and is soon to stand crowned 
in heaven or to lie sweltering in hell, there to continue 
for ever and ever. Who shall dare to fetter such a 
being? Get out of his way! Hinder him not, or do it 
at the peril of your own soul. Leave him free to find 
his way to God. Meddle not with him or with his 
rights. Let him work out his salvation as he can. No 
hand must be laid crushingly upon a creature who is on 
such a race as this — a race whose end is to be eternal 
glory or unutterable woe forever and ever. ' ' With these 
agree men like Montesquier, who truly observes that 
"a religion which has no visible head is more agreeable 
to the independence of the people, than that which has 
one. ' ' And Bancroft remarks, ' ' Calvinism saw in good- 
ness infinite joy, in evil infinite woe, and, recognizing 
no other abiding distinctions, opposed secretly, but 
surely, hereditary monarchy, aristocracy and bondage." 
On this whole discussion, compare "Calvinism in His- 
tory," by Rev. N. S. McFetridge, to which we are 
greatly indebted for this review. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 



CALVINISM AND MORALITY. 

St. Paul, in Chapters 6, 7 and 8 of Romans, as well 
as the Heidelberg Catechism, Question 64, found it nec- 
essary to meet the charge that a system like Calvinism 
is unfavorable to sound morality. Modern writers on 
ethics have also made out — on paper — a strong case 
against what they call the evil influences of Calvinism 
on the moral consciousness of the people. Even the 
popes, as recently as Pius IX and Leo XIII, had the 
affrontery, in the face of the low moral condition of 
Roman Catholic communities, to attribute the prevailing 
crimes of modern society to the ■ ' pest of Protestantism. ' ' 

But here again the facts are against these and any other 
detractors. As Froude says: 6 'Grapes do not grow on 
bramble-bushes. Illustrious natures do not form them- 
selves on narrow and cruel theories. The practical ef- 
fect of a belief is the real test of its soundness. Where 
we find an heroic life appearing as the uniform fruit of 
a particular mode of opinion, it is childish to argue in 
the face of fact that the result ought to have been differ- 
ent." Our Saviour says: "a good tree cannot bring 
forth evil fruit; neither can a corrupt tree bring forth 
good fruit." Very few will dare to contradict Henry 
Ward Beecher, who, although he opposed Calvinism in 
several of its strongest features, says: " There is no 
system which equals Calvinism in intensifying to the 
last degree ideas of moral excellence and purity of 
character. There never was a system since the world 
stood which puts upon man such motives to holiness, or 
which builds batteries that sweep the whole ground of 

167 



168 



JOHN CALVIN. 



sin with such horrible artillery. Men may talk as much 
as they please against Calvinism, but you will find that 
when they want to make an investment, they have no 
objection to Calvinists. They know that where these 
systems prevail, there their capital may be safely in- 
vested. People tell us that Calvinism plies men with 
hammer and with chisel. It does; and the result is 
monumental marble. Other systems leave men soft and 
dirty ; Calvinism leaves them of white marble to endure 
forever." The secret of all this is, that the one char- 
acteristic of Calvinistic morality which makes it so 
efficient, is its insistence on conscience and duty, rather 
than on sentiment and feeling. The first and last ques- 
tion of a true Calvinist is, "Is it right ?" These prin- 
ciples made strong men and women — sometimes dis- 
agreeable, it is true, but manly and reliable. "I am 
going to ask you," says Froude, "to consider how it 
came to pass that if Calvinism is indeed the hard 
and unreasonable creed which modern enlightenment 
declares it to be, it has possessed such singular attrac- 
tions in past times for some of the greatest men that 
ever lived ; and how, being as we are told, fatal to moral- 
ity, because it denies free-will, the first symptom of 
this operation wherever it established itself was to ob- 
literate the distinction between sins and crimes, and to 
make the moral law the rule of life for states as well 
as persons. I shall ask you again why, if it be a creed of 
intellectual servitude, it was able to inspire and sustain 
the bravest efforts ever made by men to break the yoke 
of unjust authority? When all else has failed, when 
patriotism has covered its face and human courage has 
broken down ; when intellect has yielded, as Gibbons 
says, 'with a smile or a sigh,' content to philosophize in 
the closet and abroad to worship with the vulgar ; when 



CALVINISM AND MORALITY. 



169 



emotion and sentiment and tender imaginative piety 
have become the handmaids of superstition, and have 
dreamt themselves into forgetfulness that there is any 
difference between lies and truth, — the ' slavish' form of 
the belief called Calvinism, in one or other of its many 
-forms, has borne ever an inflexible front to illusion and 
mendacity, and has preferred rather to be ground into 
powder, like flint than to bend before violence or melt 
under enervating temptation." In illustration of this 
he mentions William the Silent, Luther, Knox, Andrew 
Melville, the Regent Murray, Coligny, Cromwell, Milton, 
Bunyan, and says of them: " These were men possessed 
of all the qualities which give nobility and grandeur to 
human nature — men whose life was as upright as their 
intellect was commanding and their public aims un- 
tainted with selfishness; unalterably just where duty 
required them to be stern, but with the tenderness of a 
woman in their hearts, frank, true, cheerful, humorous, 
as unlike sour fanatics as it is possible to imagine any- 
one and able in some way to sound the keynote to which 
every brave and faithful heart in Europe instinctively 
vibrated. ' ' 

This book being intended for popular use, we cannot 
enter into a detailed discussion of Calvinism as an 
ethical force. We wish to append, however, a para- 
graph from Dr. Kuyper's "Lectures on Calvinism, 7 ' in 
which he discusses the attitude of that system to popular 
amusements. He writes : 

"Not every intimate intercourse with the unconverted 
world is deemed lawful, by Calvinism, for it placed a 
barrier against the too unhallowed influence of this 
world by putting a distinct veto upon three things, card 
playing, theatres and dancing — three forms of amuse- 



170 



JOHN CALVIN. 



ment which I shall first treat separately, and then set 
forth in their combined significance. 

Card playing has been placed under a ban by Calvin- 
ism, not as though games of all kinds were forbidden, 
nor as though something demoniacal lurked in the cards 
themselves, but because it fosters in our heart the dan- 
gerous tendency to look away from God, and to put our 
trust in Fortune or Luck. A game which is decided by 
keenness of vision, quickness of action, and range of 
experience, is ennobling in its character, but a game like 
cards, which is chiefly decided by the way in which the 
cards are arranged in the package, and blindly dis- 
tributed, induces us to attach a certain significance to 
that fatal imaginative power, outside of God, called 
Chance or Fortune. To this kind of unbelief, everyone 
of us is inclined. The fever of stock-gambling shews 
daily how much more strongly people are attracted and 
influenced by the nod of Fortune, than by solid appli- 
cation to their work. Therefore the Calvinist judged 
that the rising generation ought to be guarded against 
this dangerous tendency, because, by means of card- 
playing it would be fostered. And since the sensation 
of God's ever-enduring presence was felt by Calvin and 
his adherents as the never-failing source from which 
they drew their stern seriousness of life, they could not 
help loathing a game which poisoned this source by plac- 
ing Fortune above the disposition of God, and the 
hankering after Chance above the firm confidence in His 
will. To fear God, and to bid for the favors of Fortune, 
seemed to him as irreconcilable as fire and water. 

Entirely different objections were entertained against 
Theatre-going. In itself there is nothing sinful in fic- 
tion ; — the power of the imagination is a precious gift of 
God Himself. Neither is there any special evil in dra- 



CALVINISM AND MORALITY. 



171 



emtio imagination. How highly did Milton appreciate 
Shakespeare's drama, and did not he himself write in 
dramatic form ? Nor did the evil lie in public theatrical 
representations, as such. Public performances were 
given for all the people at Geneva, in the Market Place, 
in Calvin 's time, and with his approval. No, that which 
offended our ancestors was not the comedy or tragedy, 
nor should have been the opera, in itself, but the moral 
sacrifice which as a rule was demanded of actors and 
actresses, for the amusement of the public. A theatrical 
troop, in those days especially, stood, morally, rather 
low. This low moral standard resulted partly from the 
fact that the constant and ever changing presentation of 
the character of another person finally hampers the 
moulding of your personal character ; and partly because 
our modern theatres, unlike the Greek, have introduced 
the presence of women on the stage, the prosperity of 
the theatre being too often guaged by the measure in 
which a woman jeopardizes the most sacred treasures 
God entrusts to her, her stainless name and irreproach- 
able conduct. Certainly, a strictly moral theatre is very 
well conceivable; but with the exception of a few large 
cities, such theatres would neither be sufficiently patron- 
ized nor could exist financially ; and the actual fact re- 
mains that, taken all the world over, the prosperity of 
a theatre often increases in proportion to the moral 
degradation of the actors. Too often, therefore — Hall 
Caine, in his " Christian " corroborated once more the 
sad truth — the prosperity of a theatre is purchased at 
the cost of manly character and of female purity. And 
the purchase of delight for the ear and the eye at the 
price of such a moral hecatomb, the Calvinist, who hon- 
ored whatever was human in man for the sake of God, 
could not but condemn. 



172 



JOHN CALVIN. 



Finally, so far as the dance is concerned, even worldly 
papers, like the Parisian " Figaro/' at present justify 
the position of the Calvinist. Only recently an article 
in this paper called attention to the moral pain with 
which a father takes his daugher into the ball-room for 
the first time. This moral pain, it declared, is evident, 
in Paris at least, to all who are familiar with the whis- 
perings, indecent looks and actions prevalent in those 
pleasure-loving circles. Here. also, the Calvinist does 
not protest against the dance itself, but exclusively 
against the impurity to which it is often in danger of 
leading. 

With this I return to the barrier of which I spoke. 
Our fathers perceived excellently well that it was just 
these three : Dancing. Card-playing and Theatre-going, 
with which the world was madly in love. In worldly 
circles these pleasures were not regarded as secondary 
trifles, but honored as all-important matters ; and who- 
ever dared to attack them exposed himself to the bitter- 
est scorn and enmity. For this very reason, they recog- 
nized, in these three, the Rubicon which no true Calvin- 
ist could cross without sacrificing his earnestness to 
dangerous mirth, and the fear of the Lord to. often far 
from, spotless pleasures. And now may I ask. has not 
the result justified their strong and brave protest ? Even 
yet. after the lapse of three centuries, you will find, in 
any Calvinistic country, in Scotland, and in your own 
States, entire social circles into which this worldliness 
is never allowed to enter, but in which the richness of 
human life has turned, from without, inward, and in 
which, as the result of a sound spiritual concentration, 
there has been developed such a deep sense of everything 
high, and such an energy for everything holy, as to 
excite the envy even of our antagonists. Not only has 



CALVINISM AND MORALITY. 



173 



the wing of the butterfly in those circles been preserved 
intact, but even the gold dust upon this wing shines as 
brilliantly as ever. 

This, now, is the proof to which I invite your respect- 
ful attention. Our age is far ahead of the Calvinistic 
age in its overflowing mass of ethical essays and treatises 
and learned expositions. Philosophers and theologians 
really vie with each other in discovering for us (or in 
hiding from us, just as you may be pleased to put it) 
the straight road in the domain of morals. But there is 
something that all this host of learned scholars have not 
been able to to. They have not been able to restore 
moral firmness to the enfeebled public conscience. 

Rather must we complain that ever more and more the 
foundations of our moral building are gradually being 
loosened and unsettled, until finally there remains not 
one stronghold left of which the people in their wider 
ranks can feel that it guarantees moral certainty for the 
future. Statesmen and jurists are openly proclaiming 
the right of the strongest; the ownership of property is 
called stealing; free love has been advocated, and hon- 
esty is ridiculed. A pantheist has dared to put Jesus 
and Nero on the same footing; and Nietzsche, going 
further still, deemed Christ's blessing of the meek to be 
the curse of humanity. 

Now compare with all this the marvellous results of 
three centuries of Calvinism. Calvinism understood 
that the world w r as not to be saved by ethical philoso- 
phizing, but only by the restoration of tenderness of 
conscience. Therefore it did not indulge in reasoning, 
but appealed directly to the soul, and placed it face to 
face with the living God, so that the heart trembled, at 
His holy majesty, and in that majesty, discovered the 
glory of His love. And when, going back in this his- 



174 



JOHN CALVIN. 



torical review, you observe how thoroughly corrupt and 
rotten Calvinism found the world, to what depth moral 
life at that time had sunk, in the courts and among 
the people, in the clergy, and among the leaders of 
science, among men and women, among the higher and 
the lower classes of society : — then what censor among 
you will dare to deny the palm of moral victory to 
Calvinism, which,; in one generation, though hunted 
from the battlefield to the scaffold, created throughout 
five nations at once, many serious groups of noble men, 
and still nobler women, hitherto unsurpassed in the 
loftiness of their ideal conceptions, and unequalled in 
the power of their moral self-control." 



CHAPTER XXVII. 



CALVINISM AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

The term Calvinism implies infinitely more than 
merely a doctrinal system; it denotes an entire "Welt- 
anschauung, ' ' a general world view. Authors like Kuy- 
per, Bancroft, Proude, Ranke and others have brought 
out this feature of Calvinism in a most lucid way. Dr. 
Kuyper, former Prime Minister of Holland, in his six 
lectures on "Calvinism," writes: "This term serves also 
as a scientific name, either in an historical, philosophical 
or poetical sense. Historically, the name of Calvinism 
indicates the channel in which the reformation moved, 
in so far as it was neither Lutheran, nor Anabaptist, nor 
Socinian. In the philosophical sense, we understand by 
it that system of conceptions which under the influence 
of the master-mind of Calvin raised itself to dominance 
in the several spheres of life. And as a political name, 
Calvinism indicates that political movement which has 
guaranteed the liberty of nations in constitutional states- 
manship. In this scientific sense, the name of Calvin- 
ism is especially current among German scholars, 
whether they are friendly or opposed to the man and 
his system. " Taking the term in this strictly scientific 
sense as a principle of life and thought, Dr. Kuyper in 
his book speaks of 1. Calvinism as a life system; 2. C. 
and Religion; 3. C. and Politics; 4. C. and Science; 
5. C. and Art; 6. C. and the Future. 

In the same strain, Dr. Beattie writes in his thought- 
ful tract on "Calvinism," which has been extensively 
used in the preparation of the latter part of this chap- 
ter, as follows: "Calvinism has its own philosophy of 

175 



176 



JOHN CALVIN. 



nature, its theory of the human race, its interpretation 
of human history, its scheme of civil government, its 
doctrine of the Church and its well-defined view of the 
relation between the Church and civil government. Its 
philosophy of nature is monistic theism. Its theory 
of the race of mankind is to the effect that in some way 
it, has been constituted an organic or corporate whole. 
Its interpretation of the history of the race is that God 
is working out His great plan in ail that happens in the 
passing centuries. ' ' 

However low one's Calvinism may be as regards 
doctrinal definitions, there should be no hesitancy in any 
adherent of a Reformed or Presbyterian Church proudly 
to confess himself a Calvinist in this larger and scien- 
tific sense of the word, as over against the Weltanschau- 
ung of Romanism, Lutheranism or materialistic monism. 

Having defined Calvinism in the wider scientific sense 
of the term, we are now prepared to raise the question as 
to its relation to the best aspects of modern thought as 
manifested in the four great areas of inquiry and re- 
search — in history, philosophy, science and sociology. 

1. In the Sphere of History. — Historical research in 
modern times has made wonderful advances. It is no 
longer a matter of mere annals and statistics. It has 
acquired a distinct method of its own, which is well 
known as the historical method. The historian is no 
longer content to recite mere story and tradition, but 
seeks accuracy by getting, so far as possible, at the 
original sources of information. With scrupulous care 
he seeks to separate fact from myth, event from opinion, 
and to ascertain the actual reality of the things w^ith 
which he deals. 

Modern historical methods have also sought to dis- 
cover and trace out the inner connections and inherent 



CALVINISM AND MODERN THOUGHT. 177 

relations of the events which have transpired in the 
past. This is what is rightly called the philosophy of 
history, and in many respects the true interest and real 
value of history lie in this direction. By this means it 
is shown that the events of history are not isolated hap- 
penings, but are intimately related to each other in 
logical order and rational connection. We often use 
the phrase, ''the logic of events," and little think how 
much it means. It may be going too far to say, with the 
Hegelian school, that history is the concrete expression 
of the forms of reason, and that all historical incidents 
must be construed in accordance with the logical cate- 
gories. Still, modern historical method is more and 
more recognizing the profoundly important fact that 
Lhere is a rational factor in all history, and that one 
purpose seems to run through the ages. 

In all of this there is an echo of Calvinism. This sys- 
tem teaches, as no other does, that God is the sovereign 
Ruler over all the affairs of men, and that he is slowly 
but surely working out His eternal purposes concerning 
men in the march of the centuries. He it is who estab- 
lishes thrones and sets up princes. He it is who removes 
kings, and allows empires to pass away. He even uses 
one nation to overthrow another, to accomplish His far- 
reaching purposes thereby. 

But further, God's eternal purpose running through 
all the ages has a moral quality belonging to it. Human 
history is not merely rational; it is also moral. Right- 
eousness and wickedness play a large part on the stage 
of human history. The drama is often a terrible con- 
flict between these opposing forces. By the great apos- 
tasy in paradise the stream of human history was turned 
into the channel of evil. But the divine purpose of 
grace has opened up a new channel, and the opposing 



178 



JOHN CALVIN. 



forces have been dashing against each other ever since. 
Here, again, it is Calvinism which, with its comprehens- 
ive view^ of the sovereignty of God and of His eternal 
redeeming purpose, can solve this riddle better than any 
other system; and we may confidently believe that, as 
the true philosophy of history is more and more fully 
unfolded, Calvinism will be found to be abreast of its 
latest and best results. 

2. In the Sphere of Philosophy. — Philosophy is reflec- 
tion, the thinking consideration of things. It is the search 
for causes, the inquiry after reasons. Each age has its 
own peculiar philosophical tendency. The pendulum 
of speculation swings from one system to another through 
the ages. It may be safely said that the tendency of the 
noblest philosophical thinking of the day is toward a 
unitary system. This means a system with a single 
principle by which all things are to be explained. Hence 
the drift in modern thought toward some type of monism 
is natural. In the past, this tendency has appeared in 
materialism, w T hich seeks to explain all things from the 
atom and physical force ; and in pantheism, which holds 
to an impersonal first principle of all existence. But in 
our own day a nobler trend appears in connection with 
modern thought. This tendency is toward a spiritual 
and ethical monism, which explains all things from the 
postulate of a personal God. The universe is to be 
construed in terms of personal spirit. This may be 
termed theistic monism or monistic theism, which gives 
a place alike for the personality of the infinite and for 
the dependent and derived reality of finite things. The 
reality of the source of all being must be one, and that 
one reality is the personal God. From Him, in some 
way, all things come ; on Him, in some relation, all 



CALVINISM AND MODERN THOUGHT. 



179 



things depend; and for His glory, in the end, all things 
are. 

This tendency is in harmony with the fundamental 
principles of generic Calvinism. According to this sys- 
tem, God is the one source of all finite things. From 
Him, and for Him, all things have their, being and 
meaning. In harmony with theistic monism, God is 
the only source of all! being. He alone is independent 
and self-existent. His omnipotent agency lies at the 
root of all that comes to pass in the universe. His will, 
guided by infinite intelligence, directed according to 
absolute righteousness, and moved by boundless love, is 
the supreme fact in Calvinism. This may be regarded as 
the sovereignty of God in the sphere of philosophy. 

In modern philosophic thought thus viewed there are 
at least three particulars in which Calvinism is in accord 
with it. These particulars may be denoted by the terms, 
unity, immanence, and finality. 

It is evident that the idea of unity in modern philoso- 
phy has its counterpart in Calvinism. If modern 
thought demands a unitary and rational spiritual prin- 
ciple to explain the universe, Calvinism provides this 
in its doctrine of God and His decrees or eternal pur- 
pose. Neither materialism nor pantheism meet the re- 
quirements of philosophy or theology, for the one denies 
spirit and the other personality. And dualism is also 
defective, for it announces two eternal principles, which 
entirely oppose and exclude each other. Of all types 
of theology Calvinism best meets the demand of modern 
thought for unity. Calvinism, therefore, and monistic 
theism have a natural affinity with each other. The one 
gives the principle of unity in the realm of philosophy, 
and the other a similar principle in the sphere of the- 
ology. Both agree in holding to the absoluteness of this 



180 



JOHN CALVIN. 



unitary postulate, and both give to all finite things their 

proper dependent reality. 

The term immanence means that God's relation to His 
works is inward and abiding, and not merely external. 
"In Him we live, and move, and have our being." Id 
this way theistic monism avoids pantheism, which denies 
the transcendence of God, and escapes deism, which ig- 
nores His immanence. 

This aspect of modern thought also finds its counter- 
part in generic Calvinism. God is in all things, and 
through all things, and over all things. His purpose 
and his power are constantly expressed in the progress 
and processes of the universe. Thus Calvinism avoids 
the abyss of pantheism and escapes the mechanism of 
deism. It puts God into such relations with His crea- 
tures that He may fittingly execute His decrees in the 
works of creation and providence. Thus there is no 
event in the universe wherein God's presence and po- 
tency, directly or indirectly exercised, are not to be 
found. 

The term finality denotes end, or purpose, or design, 
or goal ; and modern thought is more and more bringing 
out the view that the universe exists for a purpose. It 
is not a chaos of separate, independent things, but a 
cosmos of related, interdependent things. It is conse- 
quently rational at its root, and intelligible, and thereby 
capable of being construed by intelligence. Only on this 
ground is science itself possible. Even Herbert Spencer, 
with his idea of the rhythmic movement of the uni- 
verse in great cycles, is an unwilling witness to this 
conclusion ; and philosophic evolution, if ever clearly 
proved to be true, will but further confirm the conclu- 
sion that the universe is moving on toward some distant 
and lofty goal. 



CALVINISM AND MODERN THOUGHT. 



131 



With no type of theology does this profound feature 
of modern thought so well agree as with the Calvinistic. 
God's eternal purpose, which has reference to His glory, 
is the final end of the whole cosmos, and His compre- 
hensive plan determines the history of the entire uni- 
verse. Immanence provides the basis for the attainment 
of this end, in the execution of the decrees. 

In the realm of philosophy Calvinism is therefore not 
out of date but quite up to the times. 

3. In the Sphere of Science. — In the sphere of the 
physical sciences, modern thought has made some of its 
greatest advances. It is in this sphere, too, that some 
of the sorest assaults of recent times upon the Christian 
system have been made. Some have even been bold 
enough to assert that Christianity in general, and Cal- 
vinism in particular, have met their Waterloo at the 
hands of modern science. In its youthful exuberance 
it was natural that certain aspects of modern science 
should produce this conviction in hearts not really in 
sympathy with the Christian system. 

But, happily, things are changing now. The best 
types of modern scientific thought are steadily taking 
positions more and more in harmony with the Christian 
faith ; and Christian faith, in turn, is gradually coming 
to a better understanding with modern science. 

It is reasonable to conclude that if Calvinism be the 
truth in the sphere of revealed religion, it will not be 
found out of harmony with the assured results of mod- 
ern science. The word and the works of God must agree, 
if rightly understood at their various points of contact. 

In all that modern science is doing to show the preva- 
lence of law and order, of unity and harmony in nature 
as a .whole, of plan and end in the cosmos, it is con- 
firming much that has already been said under the head 



182 



JOHN CALVIN. 



of modern philosophy and Calvinism. In addition to all 
this, there are certain striking features in modern sci- 
ence which deserve special consideration in this discus- 
sion. These are found largely in the realm of biology, 
and may be grouped under three terms — heredity, selec- 
tion and causation. 

Modern scientific thought makes much of heredity in 
the sphere of biology. Heredity consists in that aspect 
of living organisms by means of which certain traits 
possessed by one generation are transmitted to the next. 
In biology this principle has a large place, and it con- 
stitutes one of the laws of the theory of descent, or 
biological evolution, but it also has its application be- 
yond the realm of biology, in the mental and moral 
spheres. Certain traits are inherited, or transmitted 
from sire to son. 

Now, so far as this principle is established, it is in 
perfect harmony with one of the profound tenets of the 
Calvinistic system. Generic Calvinism has always firmly 
held that sin is a malady inherent in the race. It is in 
the blood. It descends from sire to son in some hered- 
itary way. Explain it as w r e please, the whole race is 
implicated in the fall and lies under its terrible disabili- 
ties. 

Another factor in modern science is the principle of 
selection. Based on variations which occur in organ- 
isms in nature, it is sometimes called natural selection. 
This principle of selection in biology asserts that there 
seems to be an activity operative in nature which makes 
a choice, out of the many changes which are supposed 
to happen by chance, of those features of living things 
which are suited to serve their best interests, and to pre- 
serve their successive generations in increasing vigor 
from age to age, Here we have nature's choice, her 



CALVINISM AND MODERN THOUGHT. 183 

election, which she unconsciously makes, not so much for 
the welfare of the individual as of the species as a whole. 
Many organisms fall by the way in the struggle for ex- 
istence, but the species is preserved steadily. 

This, again, is in analogy with Calvin's doctrine of 
election. If we hold the immanence of God in His 
works, then all these activities of selection in nature are 
to be directly or indirectly connected with the plan and 
agency of God. The variations upon which selection 
works are not of chance, but according to the plan of 
God; and selection, in so far as it is true in nature, is 
to be associated, through the medium of second causes, 
doubtless, with the agency of God. If, therefore, God's 
plan and activity lie back of variation and selection in 
the realm of nature, may the same not be true in other 
spheres ? If of the many variations which appear in or- 
ganisms some are selected and some passed by, we have 
what may be called the Calvinism of nature. Here is the 
selection of certain traits, not so much for their own 
sake as for the good of the whole species. The election 
of individuals among men for certain services, the se- 
lection of nations to fulfill some high function, and the 
choice of souls in Christ unto salvation and eternal life, 
are conceptions with which modern scientific thought 
need have no dispute. Calvinism will be found "to be 
fully abreast of that thought, so far as it is sound and 
true. 

The third feature of modern scientific thought to be 
considered is described by the term causation. Modern 
science is more and more making it plain that amid all 
the changes which take place in nature an adequate 
cause must be assumed. The facts that water cannot 
rise higher than its level and that all life must come 
from pre-existent life, are familiar examples of what 



184 



JOHN CALVIN. 



is here suggested. In all analysis and synthesis in the 
chemical laboratory this principle of causation is illus- 
trated. Some agency is needed to effect the synthesis 
or the analysis of the substances under experiment. 
Even evolution is now generally held to be, at most, 
simply a process or a method. In no sense is it a cause. 

Here, again, we have an echo of a cardinal factor in 
generic Calvinism. Calvinism has ever laid stress upon 
the necessity and efficacy of divine grace in the salvation 
of the human soul. That soul is spiritually dead by 
reason of sin's fatal infection. In order to work a 
spiritual and saving change in it, a cause operating from 
without, yet also within the soul, must be provided. The 
soul cannot revolutionize its own dispositions, but must 
be revolutionized by some suitable cause whose fulcrum 
lies without the soul. This cause is provided in the Cal- 
vinistic doctrine of efficacious grace. It is exercised by 
the Holy Spirit, who quickens the spiritually dead soul 
into newness of life. This fully meets the scientific de- 
mand for an adequate cause operating from without 
that which is to be changed. The principle of biogenesis 
in biology is akin to the doctrine of regeneration in 
theology. If life comes only from antecedent life in 
nature, so life comes only from antecedent life in the 
spiritual sphere. In asserting the operation of effica- 
cious grace in regeneration, Calvinism is in the atmos- 
phere of the very latest aspects of scientific thought. 

4. In the Sphere of Sociology. — Theoretic sociology 
makes much at the present day of what it calls the soli- 
darity of the race. By this it means that the members 
of the human race sustain inherent relations with each 
other. Man is not fully understood when he is regarded 
merely as an individual. He is also to be considered in 
his relations with the other members of the social or- 



CALVINISM AND MODERN THOUGHT. 



185 



ganism. This solidarity is twofold. First, the succes- 
sive generations of men are linked together by a genetic 
bond, of which heredity is an important factor. Sec- 
ondly, the men of any given generation are related to 
each other by various social, domestic, civic and religious 
bonds. 

Now, Calvinism, more than any other system, lays 
stress upon this fact in the sphere of theology. In its 
moral relations with God the race is viewed as a unity 
and as having a moral solidarity. Not only is the race 
bound together by the tie of one blood ; it is also a con- 
stitutive unity under the moral government of God. It 
matters not whether we hold the natural or federal view 
of the "in-being" of the race in Adam, or whether we 
see a measure of truth in both the natural and federal 
aspects of the unity of the race as a whole — all 
phases of generic Calvinism lay stress upon the moral 
solidarity of the race. The race as a whole was in Adam 
in some sense. Under this relation the whole race has 
gone into apostasy from God, and has become guilty 
before Him, as well as depraved in its moral state. 

And what is true of Adam and the race is true of 
Christ and His people. His people are members of His 
body, and in Him they have a spiritual unity of which 
his life is the vital bond. He and they are one, by no 
merely outward bond of devoted friendship, but by an 
inward spiritual tie, that gives what may be termed the 
spiritual solidarity of the body of Christ, the Bride, the 
Lamb 's wife. This mystical union is emphasized in Rom. 
6. It can be very fairly asserted that no other type of 
theology does such justice to these fundamental ideas 
as Calvinism. 

A second principle in modern sociology is that of 
representation, with which substitution is also associated. 



186 



JOHN CALVIN. 



Modern sociology has done much to show, in the various 
stages of social development, that the head of the family, 
the clan, the tribe, or the nation, stands in a representa- 
tive relation toward those under him and dependent on 
him. Many primitive institutions, as the totem and the 
blood bond of the tribe, exhibit this fact. And the whole 
scheme of free representative government in the State im- 
plies the principle of representation on a large scale. 

That the fact of substitution is also implied in repre- 
sentation is evidence. The welfare of those represented 
in the family, tribe, or clan, may require certain sacri- 
fices on the part of those who stand as their representa- 
tives. The head of the family, clan, or tribe, acts in the 
place of those of whom he is the head; and for their 
sake he may have to endure hardship and suffering. 
And, in addition, whatever advantage is thereby secured 
by the head is enjoyed by the whole constituency which 
the head represents and acts for. So, too, any misfor- 
tune which may come through the folly or failure of the 
head to fulfill his trust, is entailed on those for whom 
he acts. Modern sociology is more and more bringing 
this principle of representation into view. 

This represents one of the most profound and severely 
criticised factors in the Calvinistic system. This system 
holds that Adam sustained federal relations to the race, 
and that he represented it under God's moral govern- 
ment. Its teaching is that Adam represented the race of 
mankind, and that in some way or other the race sinned 
in him and fell with him in his first transgression. Cal- 
vinism also teaches that Jesus Christ is the head and 
representative of his people, given to him by the Father 
to be redeemed. As their representative he stood in their 
place, and for their sake he offered himself as a sacrifice 
for their sins. Federal representation and vicarious 



CALVINISM AND MODERN THOUGHT. 



187 



atonement are the related teachings of Calvinism at this 
point. Those types of modern theology which ignore 
these principles entirely are in danger of being declared 
obsolete by the most recent conclusions of modern soci- 
ology. 

Another principle which modern sociology brings to 
light is the interdependence of the human race, implied 
in the facts of solidarity and representation. If the in- 
dividuals of the race are all bound together as a social 
unity, then each member sustains such relations to those 
about it as to form the basis of certain duties and re- 
sponsibilities. These emerge in many ways. We see 
them in the family, in the clan, in the tribe, and in the 
nation. It is true in this regard that no man lives unto 
himself or dies unto himself. There is an altruism, or 
concern for the welfare of those about us, which modern 
sociology properly adduces as the basis of its various 
philanthropies. 

This, once more, is a thought to which Calvinism is 
not a stranger. The lofty ideas of home life, flowing out 
of the domestic relations, and parental care, and filial 
regard, which Calvinism teaches, have their natural ex- 
planation in this connection. The theory of national life 
and economic relations which Calvinism teaches exalts 
the duties and responsibilities that rest upon all the in- 
dividuals which make up the body politic. The ideal 
State, from the standpoint of Calvinism, is found where 
every unit in it, in all its relations, is actuated by a holy 
altruism to promote the welfare of the other members of 
the community. The State is God's ordinance for cer- 
tain definite ends, and Calvinism holds a doctrine of 
civil government and social relations which makes it the 
defender of civil and religious liberty wherever its in- 
fluence is rightfully exerted. Calvinists, if true to their 



188 



JOHN CALVIN. 



own system, can be neither tyrants nor slaves. They 
will claim their own rights, and at the same time regard 
the rights of others. It balances egoism and altruism 
aright. 

This inadequate discussion of a great subject has 
shown that doctrinal and scientific Calvinism is neither 
dead nor dying, but is very much alive in the realms of 
theory and practice. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 



CALVIN'S INFLUENCE ON GREAT BRITAIN AND 
HOLLAND. 

Calvin's influence, as has been shown, was not con- 
fined to Geneva; it soon became world-wide. His sys- 
tem was accepted by millions, not only in Switzerland 
and France, but also in Italy, Poland, Bohemia, and 
Hungary. The deepest and most lasting impression of 
Calvin, however, was not exerted on his own race, but 
on the widely extended family of nations belonging to 
the Teutonic and Celtic races — Germany, Holland, Eng- 
land, Scotland, Ireland, German Switzerland, South 
Africa and North America. In the sturdy manhood and 
the serious character of these peoples the vigorous system 
of Calvin found a more congenial soil than among the 
emotional and somewhat fickle nations of the Latin and 
Slavic races. And in this, history has repeated itself. 
The Gospel itself, rejected by the nations where it 
was first preached, found its strongest lodgment among 
the Teutons (embracing Germany, Great Britain, Hol- 
land, Scandinavia, Switzerland, and America) ; so also 
when the house of Romish bondage was opened by the 
Reformation the Teutonic race marched out while the 
Latin and the Slavic races kissed the chains with which 
they were held slaves. 

In England, Lutheranism was early superceded by 
the Reformed faith. In a letter to Farel, in 1539, Calvin 
for the first time speaks of the English Reformation. 
Henry VIII methods did not please him. He writes: 
*''The king is only half wise. He prohibits marriages 
of priests, retains the mass, and the seven sacraments 

189 



190 



JOHN CALVIN. 



and forbids the circulation of the Bible in the language 
of the people.' ' When Henry's 10-year-old son, Ed- 
ward VI, became king, Calvin exercised a more direct 
influence on England. The Duke of Somerset became 
Protector of England, and he had the young king 
brought up in the Protestant faith. An extended cor- 
respondence between Calvin, Somerset, Cranmer and 
the king ensued. In 1548, he dedicated to Somerset his 
commentary on First Timothy, and later, in a remark- 
able letter, he sent him a plan for a real reformation 
of England. The scheme pleased the Protector and most 
of its suggestions were adopted. We find a brief letter 
to Farel in one of his collections in which he alludes to 
the pleasure which Somerset took in his plan. "The 
English messenger has at last returned. He has brought 
a letter from the Regent, in which he expresses himself 
thankful for my services. His wife sent me a present 
of a ring, not of great value, not being worth more than 
four crown pieces. The members of his family lead me 
to expect a tolerably liberal present from him, in a short 
time, which I neither desire nor long for. For what has, 
as I hear, given a keener stimulus to him, is a sufficiently 
ample reward for me." Learned Reformed theologians 
were called as professors to England : Bucer and Fagins, 
from Strasburg, lectured at Cambridge, and Peter Mar- 
tyn. at Oxford. During Elizabeth's reign, Calvin's the- 
ological influence was supreme. Although the Queen 
had no special liking for Calvin, the reformer dedicated 
to her some of his commentaries. His "Institutes" was 
recommended by a convocation held at Oxford to the 
general study of the English nation, and continued down 
to the time of Archbishop Laud the text-book in the 
English universities. The pope made it one of his 
charges against Queen Elizabeth that "the impious book 



CALVIN *S INFLUENCE. 



191 



of Calvin was enjoined upon her subjects." There is no 
doubt that the official Creed, the 39 Articles of 1563 of 
the Episcopal Church, shows the influence of Calvin, 
while the nine Lambeth Articles of 1595 and the Irish 
Articles of Archbishop Usher of 1615 are very strongly 
Calvinistic. The Book of Common Prayer clearly shows 
dependence on the liturgies in use at Strasburg and in 
other Reformed Churches. Even as late as 1618, in the 
reign of James I, an English bishop and several Epis- 
copal clergymen sat as regular delegates from England 
in the Reformed Synod of Dor, with a presbyter for its 
moderator. It was about this time, however, that Ar- 
minianism began to spread in England, and after the 
three-cornered contest on church government, Episcopa- 
lianism became more exclusive. Officially, however, the 
Church of England and her daughter, the Protestant 
Episcopal Church in America, are still Reformed and the 
crown oath of the English king contains to this day the 
pledge "to protect and defend the Reformed religion." 

Still greater and more lasting was Calvin's influence 
on Scotland, exerted mainly through John Knox, a man 
whose unbending opposition to Romanism and prelacy 
compels admiration. He was the incarnation of the 
democratic spirit of Calvinism — a fearless, out-spoken 
man who could always be depended on for doing what 
no one else dared. At his grave a nobleman could truly 
say, "Here lies the man who never feared the face 
of man." In many ways, Knox was more Calvinistic 
than Calvin and the latter found occasion to counsel 
moderation. For this reason many distinctive traits of 
Calvinism impressed themselves more deeply upon the 
people of Scotland than even on the Church at Geneva. 

When the Bloody Mary ascended the throne of Eng- 
land, Knox fled to the continent. Here he spent the 



192 



JOHN CALVIN. 



five years of his exile, 1554-1558, mostly at Geneva with 
Calvin. In 1555, Calvin asks the city council to allow 
the refugees from England the use of one of the churches. 
"Formerly," say the minutes, "the said English have 
received other nations and have given them a church; 
but now it has pleased God to afflict them. ' ' The Church 
of the Auditoire, already used by the Italians, was 
opened to them. The building still stands and bears 
an inscription to the effect that in this church John 
Knox had preached to the English refugees. 

Calvin treated Knox with exceptional kindness. 
There seems to have been a strong affinity between the 
two characters. Their friendship was one of the most 
intimate on record between great men. Although five 
years older, Knox venerated Calvin as a father and 
looked to him for guidance and counsel. Although fifty 
years of age, he devoted himself to study under Calvin 
with the ardor of a youth. It was during this period 
that Knox, with some friends, planned a new English 
translation of the Bible, known as the ' 6 Geneva Bible. ' ' 

But Knox was greatly needed in Scotland. The nobles 
had united for the defence of the Eeformed religion, and 
they wrote to Calvin, requesting him to use his influ- 
ence with Knox to come to their aid. Knox obeyed the 
call of the Protestant lords, and became the leading 
spirit of the Scotch reformation. In 1560, parliament 
abolished the papacy. A confession of faith, ' i the book of 
discipline" and a liturgy were drawn up. The first was 
sent to Calvin for examination, and all three ratified 
by parliament. Calvin's Catechism and later also the 
Heidelberg Catechism were translated to be used for 
the instruction of the youth. 1 i The General Assembly of 
the Reformed Church of Scotland" met for the first 
time in 1560. Later, when the Reformed forces in Great 



calvin's influence. 



193 



Britain divided on the question of church government 
the Scotch Calvinists adopted the name of "Presby- 
terian," expressive of their polity. The work had been 
rapidly done. Barely a year had elapsed between the 
return of Knox from Geneva and the establishment of 
the Eeformed religion. On Nov. 8, 1559, Calvin wrote 
from Geneva : u As we wonder at success incredible in so 
short a time, so also we give great thanks to God, whose 
special blessing here shines forth." 

In the seventeenth century, Scotch Presbyterianism 
and English Puritanism produced the principles of Cal- 
vinism in a more radical manner in what is known as 
the Westminster Standards of 1647. 

Another country, "Little Holland," the real cradle 
of liberty, received through Calvin the elements of her 
greatness. In 1562 the Belgic Confession, a strictly 
Calvinistic creed, was adopted, and in spite of the most 
terrible persecutions, the Dutch people remained true to 
the Reformed faith, and in 1619, the first ecumenical 
council of the Reformed Churches, the Synod of Dor, 
was held and in its deliverances that famous body gave 
renewed and definite expression to the Reformed faith. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 



THE INFLUENCE OF CALVIN ON SWITZERLAND 
AND GERMANY. 

By Rev. J. I. Good, D.D. 

Professor in the Central Theological Seminary, Dayton, O. 

John Calvin powerfully influenced all the countries 
that received the Reformed faith. Switzerland is the 
center of Europe geographically. From her Alps radi- 
ate in all directions, north, south, east and west, the 
rivers of Europe beautifying and fertilizing that con- 
tinent. So from Switzerland the Reformed doctrines 
of Calvin, like life-giving waters spread in all directions 
over Europe. They were carired east to Hungary, Bo- 
hemia and Poland ; south, though but for a brief season, 
to Italy, west to Prance and north to Germany and 
Holland, even leaping the seas to England and Scot- 
land. 

We are to speak especially of two of these countries, 
Switzerland and Germany. Calvin may be said to have 
had an influence in three ways: mainly on their doc- 
trines, their morals and their politics. As to Switzer- 
land, of course Calvin, as a citizen of Switzerland 
greatly affected his own country, for there is a peculiar 
solidarity among the Swiss bred of their mountains and 
their freedom. 

His doctrines rapidly spread through SAvitzerland. 
Northern Switzerland, which was German and not 
French like Geneva, had already received the doctrines 
of the reformation from Zwingli and Oecolampadius be- 
fore French Switzerland ever was touched by them. 
The first problem in Calvin's time was to unite the two 

194 



CALVIN 'S INFLUENCE. 



195 



parts of Switzerland, the Germans in the north and 
the French in the south. There were some differences 
between them. On the Lord's Supper the theologians 
of Zurich were considered somewhat lower than Calvin. 
They inclined more toward the memorial view T while 
Calvin emphasized the spiritual presence of Christ at 
the supper. They differed in church government. Ger- 
man Switzerland held to a close union of the church 
with the state, so that the state would punish offenders 
m the church by a civil act as fine and imprisonment. 
Calvin separated them more, emphasizing the right of 
the church to exercise ex-communication over its own 
members. Also on predestination they differed; the 
Germans being lower and holding to the doctrine of the 
universal atonement, while Calvin held that Christ died 
for the elect. The Lutherans in Germany seeing these 
differences in Switzerland, were hoping to gain the fol- 
lowers of Calvin ; or at least to so divide the Protestants 
of Switzerland as to further weaken them against Lu- 
theranism. And in the German cantons of Berne and 
Basle for a time they gained control. But all these dif- 
ferences between German and French Switzerland were 
harmonized and Calvin's doctrines gained the victory, 
when, after some negotiations with Bullinger the head 
leader of German Switzerland, they agreed, in 1549, 
on a new creed about the Lord's Supper, the Tigurine 
confession, in which Calvin's views were accepted on 
the Lord's Supper, and also on the restriction of its 
benefits to the elect. This new creed made Switzerland 
a unit on the Reformed faith. 

Nor did the influence of Calvin stop here. The lower 
form of Reformed doctrines in regard to predestination 
held by Bullinger gradually gave way to Calvin 's higher 
views. Even at Zurich, Berne and Basle by the latter 



196 



JOHN CALVIN. 



part of the sixteenth century, the leaders of the church 
as Stucki at Zurich and Gryneus of Basle held to the 
higher Calvinism. This reign of Calvinism continued 
until in 1675 Switzerland had become so high in its 
Calvinism that, over against the lower form of Calvinism 
held by the theological school of Saumur in France, they 
drew up a new creed the Helvetic Consensus, the highest 
of the Calvinistic Creeds in existence. And it was 
adopted by all the cantons. This reveals Calvin's doc- 
trines regnant in Switzerland as in hardly any other 
land. A reaction came about 1720 through the influ- 
ence of foreign rulers and churches and Basle, Neuchatel 
and Geneva gave up subscription to that creed. But 
Zurich and Berne clung to their strict Calvinism for a 
considerable time longer and resented the interference 
of foreign powers as an impertinent interference in 
things that belonged only to the Swiss. After that time, 
due to the rationalism and the liberalizing theology of 
the nineteenth century, Calvinism as a system has pretty 
well passed away in Switzerland although an attempt 
was made to revive the old Calvinism of the Second 
Helvetic Confession when the theological seminary was 
founded at Geneva about 1830 by Gaussen, D'Aubigne 
and Malan. 

On morals, as well as theology, Calvin's views greatly 
influenced Switzerland, his severe moral code which made 
Geneva the model city of Europe, was to a greater or less 
extent followed in Switzerland. The Swiss lived simple 
lives, untouched by the luxuries and vices of the larger 
cities and other lands as France. So that when Vol- 
taire attempted, in the middle of the eighteenth cen- 
tury to introduce a theatre at Geneva, it was forbidden 
and he was compelled to open it at Ferney, over the 
French border. The Swiss people retained their sim- 



CALVIN *S INFLUENCE. 



197 



plicity of life and the higher morality bred of the Alps 
and were guided by Calvin's ethics until the time of the 
French revolution. 

The influence of Calvin for politics was in the direc- 
tion of liberty. It is very remarkable that his views 
which made the predestination of God prominent, should 
lead to the greatest freewill of man in republicanism and 
democracy. But the magnifying of God leads to the 
magnifying of man. Here Calvin did not influence 
Switzerland as much for liberty as he did other lands 
as Holland, England and the United States which have 
been said to have been born out of Calvinism; Switzer- 
land gained no greater freedom by Calvin than she had 
had before except freedom from the pope; Geneva did 
not have either civil or religious liberty under Calvin nor 
did she get them until about 1830. But he set at work 
influences toward them that reached far beyond his own 
views or his own age. 

The influence of Calvin on Germany was also great 
although not so predominately great as in Switzerland, 
for Luther and Lutheranism had already become the 
great religious force in Germany. Still the influence of 
the Reformed church was very considerable. And of the 
Reformed reformers, none exerted greater influence than 
Calvin. Already before his time, Zwingli had, by his 
visit to Marburg to the Marburg conference (1529), 
exerted a considerable influence for the Reformed. 
Later Calvin, while pastor at Strasburg in Germany 
(1538-41), exerted considerable influence, both in that 
city and at the political conferences as at Ratisbon. He 
there formed a strong friendship for Melancthon and 
influenced the reformers of Strasburg, Bucer and 
Capito. In 1556 he made another visit to Germany to 
intercede with the Lutheran authorities of Frankford 



198 



JOHN CALVIN. 



for the Reformed refugees who had found an asylum 
there, but his visit had little result. But the real foun- 
dations of the Reformed Church in Germany were not 
laid until a year or two before Calvin 's death, when Hei- 
delberg with its ruler Elector Frederick III became Re- 
formed. Calvin, however, by correspondence with the 
reformers to Germany as with Hedio, Sturm. Sleidanus 
at Strasburg and Frederick III and Olevianus at Hei- 
delberg and Landgrave Philip of Hesse exerted con- 
siderable influence. But Calvin's chief influence on 
Germany came after his death, as his doctrines more and 
more permeated the Reformed Church of Germany. 
Some of her early ministers, as Peucer and Pezel, were 
at first Melancthonians as they passed from the Lutheran 
faith over to the Reformed. But Pezel, who came to 
Nassau as a Melancthonian (1577) soon became a strong 
Calvinist, so that by 1595 he wrote the strongly Cal- 
vinistic creed of Bremen. Calvin's influence, too. was 
great on our Heidelberg Catechism. The first catechism 
of Ursinus, from which so much of the Heidelberg was 
drawn, was based mainly on Calvin's Catechism and In- 
stitutes. In doctrine the Heidelberg Catechism is Cal- 
vinistic. It is so over against Melancthon's Synergism 
(Answers 5 and 8), against his lower views about rites 
(Answers 96-8). It is positively Calvinistic, teaching 
predestination (Answers 26 and 31), the perseverance 
of the saints (Answers 1, 31, 51 and 54), Calvin's views 
of the descent into hell (Answer 44) and of the power 
of the keys (Answer 85). In its numbering of the Ten 
Commandments and of the petitions of the Lord's 
Prayer it follows Calvin. 

It has been said, as by Dr. Schaff, that the Reformed 
Church of Germany was different from the other Re- 
formed churches by being Melancthonian rather than 



CALVIN 's INFLUENCE. 



199 



Calvinistic. But this is not true according to history. 
Calvin and Melancthon were world-wide apart on the 
doctrine of predestination, Melancthon holding to syner- 
gism, Calvin to election. Neither did they agree in 
cultus. Melancthon regarded many religious rites that 
came over from the Romish church with indifference, 
while Calvin would have none that were not in the Bible. 
This difference is strikingly brought out in the Leipsic 
Interim, where Melancthon granted that Catholic cere- 
monies as extreme unction, fasts, Corpus Christi, etc^ 
should be restored in the Protestant church. Calvin 
would never have granted this. Indeed, at the diet of 
Ratisbon, Calvin found fault with Melancthon 's views 
on cultus. But it is claimed that Melancthon and Cal- 
vin were in agreement on the doctrine of the Lord's 
Supper. It is true that Melancthon was more inclined 
toward the Reformed doctrine than Luther, and Calvin 
more inclined toward the Lutheran doctrine than 
Zwingli ; but that does not mean that they were in agree- 
ment on the subject. Melancthon continually speaks 
of the presence of Christ's body ("adest" is the Latin 
word he continually uses) at the Supper. Jacoby says 
he differed from Luther not in placing Christ's body as 
absent from the Supper. But while Luther made this 
presence of Christ's body during the whole transaction 
of the Supper especially through the Word, Melancthon 
made his body present especially at the act of the com- 
municant when he received the elements. Again, Luther 
insisted on the presence of Christ's body "in, with and 
under," Melancthon only on "with," according to Rev. 
Prof. J. W. Richard, Melancthon 's biographer. But 
although Melancthon thus differed from Luther, still his 
view was Lutheran and not Reformed and differed con- 
siderably from Calvin's view of Christ's presence. Thus 



200 



JOHN CALVIN. 



Melancthon insists constantly on the presence of Christ's 
body with the elements. This is quite different from 
Calvin's view that Christ's body was up in heaven and 
not at the Lord's Supper. Christ's body was present 
according to Melancthon, absent according to Calvin. 
Calvin held that by faith we were to be lifted up by the 
Holy Spirit in heaven, so as to commune with Christ 
there. Melancthon knew nothing of Calvin's peculiar 
views of the vivific force of Christ's body in heaven 
streaming to earth like the rays of the sun. As Prof. 
J. W. Richard, in his Life of Melancthon (page 365). 
says: "There is not a single line in all Melancthon 's 
writings to show that he ever endorsed the particular 
Calvinistic formulas of a glorified body and of a com- 
munion in heaven to which the believer is lifted by faith. 
On the contrary, his formulas show that he maintained 
that the communion takes place on earth in connection 
with the eating and drinking. Moreover he ever associates 
the Supper with the forgiveness of sins as its essential 
factor, while with Calvin, the Supper is regarded more 
as a food for the soul of the believer." No, the Re- 
formed Church of Germany is not Melancthonian-Cal- 
vinistic but Calvinistic. This is proved by the position 
taken by her universities and their professors, by her 
creeds and by the testimony of church historians, 
(See History of the Reformed Church in Germany by 
Rev. J. I. Good, pages 589-623). The universities of 
Germany and their professors soon became thoroughly 
Calvinistic (Scultetus at Heidelberg was a supralap- 
sarian). Although a few of them held to a lower form 
of Calvinism, as Bergius and Martinius, yet that was 
far from Melancthonianism. Perhaps the most signifi- 
cant facts come from the two conferences, that the Re- 
formed held with the Lutherans at Leipsic in 1631, and 



calvin's influence. 



201 



Cassel in 1661, whose decisions have a semi-credal au- 
thority for the Reformed of Germany. At both of them, 
the Reformed took firm ground for predestination and 
reprobation. We have just gotten hold of a book that 
shows how thoroughly Calvinism was introduced in the 
Palatinate almost as soon as it became Reformed. It 
is the Institutes of Calvin, published at Heidelberg in 
1572 in German, issued with the approval of the Re- 
formed professors there, and to it is appended Calvin's 
Catechism and Liturgy. All this shows how rapidly the 
Reformed Church of Germany became quite thoroughly 
imbued with Calvin's doctrines. Calvinism became more 
liberal and through the influence of rationalism became 
lower, until, in the nineteenth century, much of the Re- 
formed Church was united with the Lutheran Church 
in Germany. But there is still a considerable element 
that clings to the old Calvinism of Calvin. In morals, 
the Reformed Church of Germany was somewhat af- 
fected by Calvin's ethics as they were somewhat stricter 
than the Lutherans. And politically, while liberty has 
also gained much headway in Germany, yet as one of the 
late Reformed writers, Zahn, puts it in his book "The 
Influence of the Reformed Church on the Greatness of 
Prussia," that land owes much of her prominence by 
which she now stands at the head of the states of Ger- 
many to the fact that her rulers were Reformed and were 
affected by Reformed principles and associations. 



CHAPTER XXX. 



CALVINISM IN AMERICA. 
By Rev. Wm. Henry Roberts, D.D., LL.D. 

Philadelphia, Pa. 

Politically, Calvinism is the chief source of modern 
republican government. That Calvinism and republi- 
canism are related to each other as cause and effect is 
acknowledged by authorities who are not Presbyterians 
or Reformed. Isaac Taylor calls republicanism the 
Presbyterian principle. Bishop Horsley declares that 
' £ Calvin was unquestionably in theory a Republican, ' ' 
and adds that "so wedded was he to this notion, that he 
endeavored to fashion the government of all the Protest- 
ant Churches upon republican principles. ' ' This thought 
is still further carried forward by Bancroft when he 
speaks of "the political character of Calvinism, which 
with one consent and with instinctive judgment the mon- 
archs of that day feared as republicanism." Emilio 
Castelar, the leader of the Spanish liberals, says that 
"Anglo-Saxon democracy is the product of a severe the- 
ology, learned in the cities of Holland and Switzerland. 7 1 
Leopold Von Ranke, the German historian, gives his 
weighty judgment in the words, "John Calvin was the 
virtual founder of America." James Anthony Froude, 
the English historian, bears witness to the character of 
the political progress of the last three centuries in the 
sentence, "nearly all the chief benefactors of the modern 
world have been Calvinists." Lord Macaulay writes 
that the ministers of the Church of Scotland inherited 
the republican opinions of Knox, and also states that the 

202 



CALVINISM IN AMERICA. 



203 



Long Parliament, which was controlled by Presbyterians, 
"is justly entitled to the reverence and gratitude of all 
in every part of the world who enjoy the blessings of 
constitutional freedom. 7 7 The Long Parliament was the 
body which gave existence to the Westminster Assembly, 
and Macaulay's testimony therefore points to the inti- 
mate connection between Calvinistic doctrine and con- 
stitutional government. These extracts from the writ- 
ings of men who were not themselves Presbyterians, in- 
dicate clearly the political influence of the doctrinal 
ideas contained in the Westminster Standards. 

The AVestminster Standards were the common doc- 
trinal standards of all the Calvinists of Great Britain 
and Ireland, the countries which have given to the 
United States its language and to a considerable degree 
its laws. The English Calvinists, commonly known as 
Puritans, early found a home on American shores, and 
the Scotch, Dutch, Scotch-Irish, French and German 
settlers, who were of the Protestant faith, were their 
natural allies. It is important to a clear understanding 
of the influence of Westminster in American Colonial 
history to know that the majority of the early settlers of 
this country from Massachusetts to New Jersey in- 
clusive, and also in parts of Maryland, Virginia, and 
the Carolinas, were Calvinists. They brought with them 
to this land those doctrinal ideas which exalt, as we have 
seen, in the human mind, the sovereignty of God, which 
bring all lives and institutions to the test of the Holy 
Scripture, which teach that the divine being is no re- 
specter of persons, and which lead logically to the con- 
clusion that all men are born free and equal. Further, 
the early British settlers, whether Presbyterians or Puri- 
tans, were all believers in the Westminster Confession. 
The Congregationalists of New England adopted it for 



204 



JOHN CALVIN. 



doctrine in 1648, one year after its completion at Lon- 
don; the Baptists also adopted it in 1677, except asjio 
Baptist peculiarities; the Presbyterians always main- 
tained it vigorously for both doctrine and government; 
and the Reformed Dutch were in full sympathy with the 
Presbyterians. To put the situation concisely, about the 
year 1700 the American Colonists were divided into two 
great sections, the one Episcopalians and Monarchists, 
the other Calvinists and believers in popular govern- 
ment. From Boston to the Potomac Puritan and Pres- 
byterian Calvinists were in the ascendant, and from the 
Potomac southward the majority of the people w T ere of 
opposite tendencies. Naturally between these parties 
conflicts arose, caused by their fundamental differences 
in religion, in church government, and in the views 
which they held of the rights of the people. Into a 
lengthy and adequate consideration of these differences 
and of the conflicts which they engendered, the limits 
of space forbid that I should enter. I shall content 
myself with concise statement of several particulars, 
each of which is intimately connected as a fundamental 
factor with the formation of the American Republic. 

One of the initial points of difference between the Cal- 
vinists and other of the early American settlers had 
to do with popular education. We to-day believe that 
the education of all citizens is fundamental to the wel- 
fare of the Republic. This principle, however, it should 
be understood, is a logical result of Calvinistic thought 
and practice. Calvinists, taught by the Holy Scriptures 
made religion a personal matter, not between man and 
the Church, but between the soul and God, and necessi- 
tated personal knowledge on the part of human beings 
of God's Word as the law of faith and life. Education 
in religious truth became therefore a cardinal principle 



CALVINISM IN AMERICA. 



205 



of the Calvinists, and the steps were easy and swift from 
it to secular and popular education. This logical con- 
nection between Calvinism and education is acknowl- 
edged by our historian Bancroft, who says that Calvin 
was the " first founder of the public school system." It 
is also shown by the history of popular education. A 
high authority states that Presbyterian Scotland "is en- 
titled to the credit of having first established schools for 
primary instruction to be supported at the public ex- 
pense. " The Scotch system of free education was 
founded in 1567, fifty years before the American Calvin- 
ist colonies had been established. Eeformed Holland 
followed closely in the footsteps of Scotland, and the 
first settlers in New England and the Middle States, 
being themselves Calvinists, naturally proceeded at once, 
like their European brethren of similar faith, to care for 
the interests of education. Harvard, Yale and Prince- 
ton Universities were all founded by men who believed 
in the Westminster Confession, and as early as 1647 
Massachusetts and Connecticut established public school 
systems. In some other colonies, however, a very differ- 
ent state of affairs was to be found. An Episcopal gov- 
ernor of Virginia, in 1661, thanked God that there were 
in that region neither "free schools nor printing." 
Steadily year by year, however, the belief in popular 
education, nurtured by our Calvinistic and Puritan an- 
cestors, by men who believed in the Westminster Con- 
fession, and in the canons of the Synod of Dort, spread 
throughout the colonies, and to-day the right of all 
persons to become through instruction intelligent citi- 
zens is everywhere recognized in this great republic. Is 
education one of the foundation-stones of the nation? 
Then honor to whom honor is due, to the men of the 
Westminster Confession, and to those who with them be- 



206 



JOHN CALVIN. 



lieved in the application of Calvinistic principles to secu- 
lar education. 

Another cardinal principle of the government of this 
American nation is the separation of Church and State, 
with its resulting absolute religious freedom for the in- 
dividual. This characteristic of the organization of the 
republic is also a logical outcome of Calvinistic doctrine. 
Establishments of religion are found in Europe, even 
in such Presbyterian lands as Scotland and Holland, 
but they are survivals from a past age, and are not a 
rightful development from the great Calvinistic prin- 
ciple, "that God alone is Lord of the conscience." This 
was seen clearly in the American Colonies first by the 
Dutch settlers in New York, who were Presbyterians, 
then by the Baptists, who equally with the Presbyterians 
are Calvinists. The English-speaking American Presby- 
terians quickly recognized the full force of the principle, 
and as early as 1729, the General Synod of the Presby- 
terian Church declared that the power to persecute 
persons for their religion was contrary to the Word of 
God, and that the Church should be independent of the 
State. This Scriptural position was antagonized, how- 
ever, at the first by the Congregationalists in New Eng- 
land, and especially by the Episcopalians in all the 
colonies where they were in authority. Gradually, how- 
ever, the principle of untrammeled religious liberty won 
its way to recognition in New England, and the acknowl- 
edgment of it, there and in other parts of the country, 
was hastened by the attempts made from 1750 onward to 
establish the Episcopal Church in the colonies. United 
resistance to such attempts was first organized in 1766, 
ten years prior to the Declaration of Independence, and 
in large part by the General Synod of the Presbyterian 
Church. A petition had been sent by Episcopalians, in 



CALVINISM IN AMERICA. 



207 



the year just named, from a convention held in New 
York, to the British government, for the appointment of 
Bishops for America. Presb3^terians and Congregation- 
alists, Dutch, German and French Protestants had ex- 
perienced the baneful power of established Episcopal 
Churches on the other side of the Atlantic. The bishops 
whom their ancestors had suffered under were arrogant 
lords, temporal and spiritual, over the heritage of God, 
men of an arbitrary temper and a merciless, persecuting 
spirit. American Calvinists could not forget the awful 
butcheries of the Spanish tyrants in the Netherlands, 
the terrible devastation wrought in the valley of the 
Rhine, the 100,000 victims of the massacre of St. Bar- 
tholomew, or the 18,000 covenanters who in Scotland, 
during a few brief years, were either massacred by dra- 
goons or executed by the agents of ecclesiastical tyranny. 
The moment, therefore, that religious liberty was seri- 
ously threatened by the schemes of a Church which at 
that time was ultra-loyal to the British crown, and 
whose ministers with hardly an exception were opposed 
to the cause of the Colonies, American Calvinists joined 
forces and from New England, southward through New 
York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and the valley of 
Virginia, to the highlands of North and South Carolina, 
never wavered a hair's-breadth from a thoroughgoing 
devotion to the cause of religious liberty. They stood 
shoulder to shoulder in opposition to ecclesiastical 
tyranny, and their courage and high intelligence secured 
for the republic, that religious freedom which is now 
a leading characteristic of our national life. 

Having dealt with religious liberty, it is natural now 
to turn to the consideration of the specific relation of 
the American Presbyterian Church, to the civil liberty 
which was secured by the independence of the United 



208 



JOHN CALVIN. 



States. The opening of the Revolutionary struggle 
found the Presbyterian ministers and churches ranged 
solidly on the side of the colonies. In 1775 the General 
Synod issued a pastoral letter, an extract from which 
indicates the spirit prevailing in the Church, and reads, 
' ' Be careful to maintain the union which at present sub- 
sists through all the Colonies. In particular, as the Con- 
tinental Congress, now sitting at Philadelphia, consists 
of delegates chosen in the most free and unbiased man- 
ner by the people, let them not only be treated with re- 
spect and encouraged in their difficult service, not only 
let your prayers be offered up to God for His direction 
in their proceedings, but adhere firmly to their resolu- 
tions, and let it be seen that they are able to bring out 
the whole strength of this vast country to carry them 
into execution." Contemporary with this letter of the 
Synod was the famous Mecklenburgh Declaration of In- 
dependence, renouncing all allegiance to Great Britain, 
passed by a convention in Western North Carolina, com- 
posed of delegates nearly all Presbyterians, and fore- 
stalling the action of the Colonial Congress in the same 
line by more than a year. Further, in the sessions of 
the Continental Congress, the influence of no delegate 
exceeded that wielded by the Rev. John Witherspoon, 
president of Princeton College, the only clerical signer 
of the Declaration of Independence — "a man Scotch in 
accent and strength of conviction, but American at 
heart." Under his leadership and that of others the 
American Presbyterian Church never faltered in her 
devotion to the cause of the independence of these 
United States; her ministers and members periled all 
for its support, being ready, with Witherspoon to go 
to the block, if need be, in defence of civil and re- 
ligious liberty. So resolute and aggressive were they in 



CALVINISM IN AMERICA. 



209 



their opposition to the English government that the 
Colonial cause was repeatedly spoken of in Great Britain 
as the Presbyterian Rebellion. At the close of the war, 
in 1783, the General Synod addressed a letter to its 
churches, congratulating them on the "general and al- 
most universal attachment of the Presbyterian body to 
the cause of liberty and the rights of mankind. ' ' hat 
was true of the Presbyterian was true of the other Cal- 
vinistic churches of the land, of the Congregational and 
also of the German and Dutch Reformed. It is esti- 
mated that of the 3,000,000 Americans at the time of the 
American Revolution, 900,000 were of Scotch or Scotch- 
Irish origin ; that the German and Dutch Calvinists 
numbered 400,000, and the Puritan English 600,000. 
If the believers in the AVestminster Standards and cog- 
nate creeds had been on the side of George III in 1776, 
the result would have been other than it was. But they 
stood where thoroughgoing Calvinists must ever stand, 
with the people and against tyrants, and therefore under 
the blessing of God the American Colonies became free 
and independent States. Rightly then do we acknowl- 
edge the debt of the Republic to the men of the Westmin- 
ster Standards for civil liberty. 

We pass now to a fact which in connection with the 
influence of our Church upon the republic is quite as 
important as any yet dealt with, the position of the 
Presbyterian Church for three-quarters of a century, as 
the sole representative upon this continent of republican 
government as now organized in this nation. From 1706 
to the opening of the revolutionary struggle, the only 
body in existence which stood for our present national 
political organization was the General Synod of the 
American Presbyterian Church. It alone among eccle- 
siastical and political colonial organizations exercised 



210 



JOHN CALVIN. 



authority, derived from the colonists themselves, over 
bodies of Americans scattered through ail the colonies 
from New England to Georgia. The colonies in the sev- 
enteenth and eighteenth centuries, it is to be remem- 
bered, while all dependent upon Great Britain were in- 
dependent of each other. Such a body as the Continental 
Congress did not exist until 1774. The religious condi- 
tion of the country was similar to the political. The 
Congregational Churches of New England had no con- 
nection with each other, and had no power apart from 
the civil government. The Episcopal Church was with- 
out organization in the Colonies, was dependent for 
support and a ministry on the Established Church of 
England, and was filled with an intense loyalty to the 
British monarchy. The Eeformed Dutch Church did 
not become an efficient and independent organization 
until 1771, and the German Reformed Church did not 
attain to that condition until 1793. The Baptist 
Churches were separate organizations, the Methodists 
were practically unknown, and the Quakers were non- 
combatants. But in the midst of these disunited eccle- 
siastical units one body of American Christians stood 
out in marked contrast. The General Synod of the Pres- 
byterian Church was not dependent for its existence 
upon any European Church, was efficiently organized, 
and had jurisdiction over churches in the majority of 
the colonies. Every year the Presbyterian ministers 
and elders from the different colonies, came up to the 
cities of Philadelphia or New York, to consider not only 
the religious interests of their people, but likewise edu- 
cational and at times political questions. It was impos- 
sible, at that date, it must be remembered, to separate 
these latter issues from the affairs of the Church, for 
the country was under the English government, the 



CALVINISM IN AMERICA. 



211 



Episcopal Church was the only Church to which that 
government wa^ favorable, and Christians of other be- 
liefs were compelled to act vigorously and unitedly in 
the maintenance of both their religious and secular in- 
terests. And the Presbyterian Church filled with the 
spirit of liberty, intensely loyal to its convictions of 
truth, and gathering every year in its General Synod, 
became through that body a bond of union and cor- 
respondence between large elements in the population of 
the divided colonies. Is it any wonder that under its 
fostering influence the sentiments of true liberty, as 
well as the tenets of a sound gospel, were preached 
throughout the territory from Long Island to South 
Carolina, and that above all a feeling of unity between 
the Colonies began slowly but surely to assert itself. 
Too much emphasis cannot be laid, in connection with 
the origin of the Nation, upon the influence of that eccle- 
siastical republic, which from 1706 to 1774 was the only 
representative on this continent of fully developed fed- 
eral republican institutions. The United States of 
America owes much to that oldest of American Repub- 
lics, the Presbyterian Church. 

The influence which the Presbyterian Church exer- 
cised for the security of unity between the Colonies was 
zealously employed, at the close of the war for in de- 
pendence,- to bring them into a closer union. The main 
hindrance to the formation of the Federal Union, as it 
now exists, lay in the reluctance of many of the States 
to yield to a general government any of the powers 
which they possessed. The federal party in its advocacy 
of closer union had no more earnest and eloquent sup- 
porters that John Witherspoon, Elias Boudinot and other 
Presbyterian members of the Continental Congress. 
Sanderson, in his lives of the signers of the Declaration 



212 



JOHN CALVIN. 



of Independence, states that " W T itherspoon strongly 
combated the opinion expressed in Congress that a last- 
ing confederation among the States was impracticable, 
and he warmly maintained the absolute necessity of 
union to impart vigor and success to the measures of 
government." In this he was aided by many who had 
come to the views which he, as a Presbyterian, had al- 
ways maintained. Those who differed with Witherspoon 
at the first came at last to his position. Slowly but 
surely ideas of government, in harmony with those of the 
"Westminster Standards, were accepted as formative 
principles for the government of the United States, and 
that by many persons not connected with the Presby- 
terian Church. Among these were the great leaders in 
the Constitutional Convention. James Madison, a gradu- 
ate of Princeton, who sat as a student under Wither- 
spoon ; Alexander Hamilton, of Scotch parentage, and 
whose familiarity with Presbyterian government is fully 
attested; and above all George Washington, who though 
an Episcopalian, had so great a regard for the Presby- 
terian Church and its services to the country, that he not 
only partook of holy communion with its members, but 
gave public expression to his high esteem. Indeed, at 
one time so marked was the respect for our Church dur- 
ing Eevolutionary days, that it was feared by Christians 
of other denominations that it might become in America 
what it was in Scotland, the Established Church, and 
so widespread was the feeling of alarm, that the General 
Synod felt compelled to pass a deliverance setting forth 
its views in relation to religious freedom. Great, how- 
ever, as was the influence of the Presbyterian Church in 
those trying times, its ministers and members were al- 
ways true to their own principles, and in every possible 
manner sought to maintain and further them in their 



CALVINISM IN AMERICA. 



213 



application to the government of the United States, and 
especially in connection with the union of the Colonies 
whose independence had been achieved. Presbyterians 
both in the Old World and the New had been accustomed 
to representative government, to the subordination of 
the parts to the whole, and to the rule of majorities 
for more than two centuries prior to the American 
Ee volution. They knew the value of unity to popular 
government, and they labored earnestly and persistently 
until their governmental principles w^ere all accepted by 
the American people, and the divided Colonies became 
the United States of America. It is not that the claim is 
made, that either the principles of the Calvinistic creed 
or of the Presbyterian government, were the sole source 
from which sprang the government of this great Ee- 
public of which we to-day are citizens, but it is asserted 
that mightiest among the forces which made the Colonies 
a nation were the governmental principles found in the 
Westminster Standards, and that the Presbyterian 
Church taught, practiced, and maintained in fulness, first 
in this land that form of government in accordance 
with which the Eepublic has been organized. Our own 
historian Bancroft says, "the Eevolution of 1776, so far 
as it was affected by religion, was a Presbyterian meas- 
ure. It was the natural outgrowth of the principles 
which the Presbyterianism of the Old World planted in 
her sons, the English Puritans, the Scotch Covenanters, 
the French Huguenots, the Dutch Calvinists, and the 
Presbyterians of Ulster." What the historian states as 
true of the war for independence is true of the organized 
government of the Eepublic. The elements of popular 
government were, without question, found in many of 
the Colonies, especially in New England, but the federal 
principle, whose acknowledgment resulted in the Ameri- 



214 



JOHN CALVIN. 



can nation, through the adoption of the Constitution of 
1788, was found previous to that year in full operation 
upon this Continent, only in the American Presbyterian 
Church, and had in it its most practical and successful 
advocate. Chief among the blessings which Presbyteri- 
ans and Reformed aided in bestowing upon this country 
was and is the Federal Union. 

Such is the relation of Calvinism to our national life, 
such is the answer which as Presbyterians and Reformed 
we give to the question, what have these principles done 
for the Republic? To-day, as we look over our broad 
national domains, as we see the 80,000,000 of our in- 
habitants in the enjoyment of education, of religious 
freedom, of civil liberty, of the blessings which the Fed- 
eral Union has secured to the nation, we can say, this 
hath Calvinism wrought! This, too, is our answer to 
the assertion made by some ill-informed persons, in 
whose minds prejudice has usurped the throne of sound 
reason, the assertion that Calvinism is dead ! Dead ! Cal- 
vinism dead! Its fundamental principles are main- 
tained to-day in this land not only by the Presbyterian 
and the Reformed Churches, but also by Baptists, Con- 
gregationalists, and many Episcopalians. The majority 
of American Protestants are Calvinists. Calvinism 
dead ! It will cease to be both life and power only when 
popular education shall give place to popular ignorance, 
when civil and religious liberty shall vanish, when the Re- 
public shall be shattered into separate and warring na- 
tionalities, and when the very life shall have perished 
from government of the people, by the people, and for the 
people. But never shall such changes be. Oh, America, 
America! The sovereign hand of the Almighty rocked 
thy cradle, the eternal purpose sustained and nurtured 
thy founders, and we believe that the unchangeable di- 



CALVINISM IN AMERICA. 



215 



vine decree hath ordained thee to be an indestructible 
union of indestructible States, the leader of the hopes 
of mankind, the majority of thy citizen servants of God 
and lovers of humanity, until the hour when God shall in 
truth dwell with men, and all mankind shall be His 
people. 



■ 



CHAPTER XXXI. 



RECENT STATISTICS 

of the Reformed Churches throughout the world holding 
the Presbyterial System. 

IN THE UNITED STATES. 

Communicants 



The Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A., . . 1,300,329 

The Presbyterian Church in the U. S., 268,733 

The United Presb. Church of N. A., 153,956 

The Reformed (Dutch) Church in America, 117,139 

Christian Reformed Church in N. A., 25,175 

The Reformed (German) Church in the 

United States, 289,328 

Reformed Presbyterian Church, Synod, . . . 9,404 

The Associate Reformed Synod of the South, 13,368 
Reformed Presbyterian Church, General 

Synod, 3,500 

The Welsh Calvinistic Methodist or Presby- 
terian Church in the U. S. A., . .' 14,500 

Other churches, 1,000 



Total, 2,196,432 

IN CANADA. 

The Presbyterian Church in Canada, 241,511 

Church of Scotland in Canada, 10,000 

IN ENGLAND AND WALES. 

The Presbyterian Church of England, 85,774 

The Church of Scotland in England, 4,000 

Calvinistic Methodist or Presbyterian Church 

of Wales, 185,000 

216 



IN IRELAND. . 217 

The Presbyterian Church in Ireland, 106,516 

The Reformed Presbyterian Church in Ire- 
land, 4,000 

Other churches, • 2,000 

IN SCOTLAND. 

The Church of Scotland, 698,566. 

The United Free Church of Scotland, ..... 505,774 

The Free Church of Scotland, 10,000 

Other churches, 10,000 

EUROPE. ; 

Bohemia and Moravia, 250,000 

France, 1,000,000 

Germany, 3,000,000 

Holland, 2,500,000 

Hungary, 3,000,000 

Italy, 100,000 

Switzerland, 1,700,000 

Other countries, 400,000 

MISCELLANEOUS. 

Africa, 400,000 

Asia, 400,000 

Australasia, 700,000 

South America, 80,000 



The above tables show the number of communicants 
in America and Great Britain, and the number of ad- 
herents in other countries : — 

SABBATH-SCHOOL STATISTICS OF REFORMED AND PRESBlf- 
TERIAN CHURCHES IN THE UNITED 
STATES, 1908. 



Presbyterian Church in the IT. S. A.. 
Presbyterian Church in the U. S., 



1,164,190 
224.336 



21S 



JOHN CALVIN. 



Welsh Calvinistic Methodist or Presbyterian 

Church in the U. S. A., 15,500 

United Presbyterian Church of North 

America, 152,294 

Associate Reformed Synod of the South, . . . 10,060 

Reformed Presbyterian Church, Synod, .... 9,127 

Reformed Presbyterian Church, Gen. Synod, 3,500 

Reformed (Dutch) Church in America, .... 117,633 

Christian Reformed Church in N. A., 23,500 

Reformed (German) Church in the United 

States, 268,079 



Total, *1,977,632 



*About one-tenth of the above total is composed of officers and teachers. 



APR 9 1909 



